After the destructive shitstorm that happened when Pokémon collaborated with Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum in 2023, I’m surprised any esteemed establishment wants to partner with Pikachu and friends. Videos of scalpers pulling a Black Friday-level raid on the museum’s store are still lodged in my brain, and when I heard the Natural History Museum in London was going to have a Pokémon exhibit later this month, I started bracing myself for a repeat. It may still happen, but now that The Pokémon Company and the museum have announced the card they’ll be giving out at the event, some fans are letting out a sigh of optimistic relief that scalpers might leave the whole thing alone.
The “Pikachu at the Museum” promo card is super cute, and shows the little yellow guy excitedly walking through a museum adorned with what look like fossils of Aerodactyl and Tyrantrum. At a glance, it doesn’t look like a great card for competitive play, with reasonably low stats and good but not great damage output for the amount of energy cards you’ll have to feed into it, but none of that actually matters because this card won’t be used in a deck. It’s a jumbo card, not suitable for use in a playable deck or, perhaps more notably, for placement into a collector’s binder.
This is significant because jumbo cards tend to go under scalpers’ radars, specifically because they’re often harder to sell. Though its rarity may still bring in vultures, fans are hopeful this choice will take the wind out of resellers’ sails. On top of this, the card will be available at select UK retailers on January 30, so if scalpers want it that badly, they might have better luck bothering a store than a museum.
“I love how their scalping prevention is ‘let’s make it a jumbo, nobody cares about jumbos,’” ZVAARI wrote on Reddit. “Hope someone makes a nice normal sized reproduction of it, the art is cool and I’d like to have it in my binder.”
“Its both a shame it’s oversized (won’t fit in my collection nicely), but also will hopefully prevent too much hype,” PlopTheOwl wrote in the same thread. “Love the art. Would have liked it to be a full art, but honestly so pleased to see some Pokémon bones like in-game Pokémon museums.”
After this announcement, I’m more concerned the collab’s exclusive merchandise might be targeted by scalpers, rather than the card itself. The museum will also be selling an exclusive collection of art, stationery, clothes, collectibles, and a Pikachu plush showing him hugging a miniature museum. These will also be sold online at the UK Pokémon Center shop and the museum’s online store. If nothing else, it seems the museum and Pokémon Company are trying to avoid a second Van Gogh debacle, but we’ll see if these safeguards actually amount to anything, as scalpers still find a way to ruin anything with Pikachu’s face on it. If nothing else, I hope the fans who show up to see the exhibit are able to have a good time without being trampled by someone looking to flip the merchandise.
The Pokémon x Natural History Museum event will last from January 26 to April 19.
