Scalpers have found a new target and McDonald's customers aren’t lovin’ it.
Due to a limited supply of PS5 consoles, scalpers have set their sights on Pokémon cards found in McDonald’s Happy Meals. The poor kids.
To celebrate Pokémon’s 25th anniversary, McDonald’s joined forces with Nintendo to give consumers a chance to collect 50 Pokémon cards in their Happy Meal. Some of them are common, some of them are rare and some are ultra-precious holographic versions.
Pokémon fans have a ball of a time trading their new cards, with some even selling them online if they were lucky to find a pack in a Happy Meal.
However, these scalpers took it a step (or ten) too far.
In gaming, scalpers are people who buy consoles at retail stored and then resell at a higher price. In this case, scalpers buy Happy Meals for $2.49 (approximately R36,60) and then sell the Pokémon cards (if they find a pack) for a hefty €15 (about R270) a pack to the highest bidder. Others also take to eBay to sell the cards.
Some people upping the ante and selling individual cards. On eBay, a foil Bulbasaur is reportedly going for $10, while a holographic Pikachu is going for a staggering $60. It is believed that the holographic favourites will likely go for $100 in the near future.
McDonald’s has reportedly tried to clamp down on this behaviour. A lot of McDonald’s stores have started to limit the number of cards they’d give to a single customer. However, this has only made the scalpers go to different McDonald’s to find the cards.
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