Pokémon Center Trolls Fans With Worst 30th Anniversary TCG Drop Yet

3 hours ago 7

Published Oct 15, 2026, 1:42 PM EDT

Patricia is the former editor-in-chief of Kotaku, where she spent a decade writing and editing. Prior to that, she served as the Culture Editor at Polygon, and as a reporter at The Verge. Hernandez specializes in Pokémon TCG, Nintendo, and offbeat internet culture stories.

Pokémon fans were hoping for the Ultra Premium Collection from the 30th Anniversary TCG set

Detective Pikachu - Mr. Mime taken aback

On Thursday, Pokémon restock Discord servers were buzzing with rumors that The Pokémon Center might drop its hyped 30th Anniversary Ultra Premium Collection. The whispers were real, but what TPC actually dropped was not what anyone was expecting.

If you're willing to sit in a queue for many hours, you, too, could have the privilege of purchasing one (1) 30th Anniversary mini tin. The tins are cute, and they come with some nice artwork and stickers. The tins contain only two packs.

This TPC drop is marked at a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $9.99, which is a steal compared to the tags at major retailers like Target or local card shops. But is staring at Psyduck for eight hours just to get two packs worth it?

The good news is that users can purchase multiple types of tins. There are eight possible tins, which could potentially mean an upper limit of 16 packs. Yet even in that scenario, this drop remains awful. First off, why is TPC selling tins randomly, which are already out in the wild, and not doing pre-orders for the UPC, which is out in a couple of weeks?

More critically, every individual listing represents another set of clicks that could flag the user and get them banned from the website. TPC's anti-bot features are aggressive, but they are not always successful at capturing the intended reseller targets. Multiple listings for what are essentially the same product also increases how much time a user has to spend before checking out the cart. As veterans know, successfully adding a single item to a TPC cart is notoriously difficult during an active drop. Users who try and get everything are more likely to encounter errors or, worse, watch those items sell out.