Over the last year or so, Pokemon cards have become big business for resellers. Card packs are constantly flying off the shelves at large retail stores, sometimes leaving Pokemon-related chaos in their wake. Now some mischievous manufacturer in China tried to pull one over on the Pokemon fans of the world but was stopped by Chinese authorities before any harm could be done to the broader collector market.

Chinese news outlet Yicai Global posted a story claiming that 20 boxes of counterfeit Pokemon cards were successfully intercepted at Shanghai's Pudong Airport. A video posted on Twitter from the news outlets shows tall stacks of boxes wrapped up on pallets in police custody. One officer pulls out a box for the camera, showing that it was a Spanish Language version of the Pokemon Sword and Shield packs.

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The counterfeit cargo was bound for The Netherlands earlier this week. The state-run outlet claims that the shipment originated from a company in China's Qingdao Province. Yicai Global also says that this shipment of counterfeit Pokemon cards weighed in at approximately 7.6 tons and represents one of the country's largest seizures of counterfeit products in recent years. Being that the cards were in Spanish, their intended final destination may have been Spain or some other Latin American country.

The popularity of Pokemon cards has seen a resurgence in the last few years as content creators and collectors host pack opening videos and live streams showing off their ever-growing collection of cards. Furthermore, the exceptionally rare Pokemon cards have been resold individually for upwards of US$100,000. With that resurgence, the market for knock-off cards and Pokemon resellers looking to capitalize on the hype has grown with it.

The Pokemon Company reportedly sold 34 Billion cards in 2020 as the global appeal has reached new heights not seen since its arrival in the late 90s. With so many Pokemon cards moving in just the last year alone, even a stockpile as massive as what was just intercepted could have easily blended into the worldwide market and been bought by customers that are not trained to know what to look for between legitimate cards and fakes. Just one more thing to be mindful of in case fans want to buy cards outside of large retailers or secondhand resellers.

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