Pokemon Center cancelled thousands of 30th Celebration orders this week, and some of the shoppers who lost theirs never touched a bot.
The set is the first Pokemon TCG expansion in the franchise’s 30-year history to launch worldwide on the same day, and it reprints certified chase cards like the original Base Set Charizard. That’s exactly the kind of nostalgia bait that draws scalper bots by the thousand, and this time Pokemon Center’s cleanup looked messier than usual.
Pokemon Center’s bot crackdown is catching real fans too
According to the Pokemon Alerts & News account on X, Pokemon Center cancelled a large volume of 30th Celebration orders this week, and while the goal appeared to be catching bots, the replies showed plenty of ordinary shoppers swept up as collateral damage too.
One reply came from a manual buyer who hadn’t gone near the purchase limits, just two ebs and stickers and lost the order anyway.
It wasn’t the first time the tactic backfired slightly. Last September, scalpers bragged about botting over 42,000 Phantasmal Flames items in minutes, only for Pokemon Center to cancel the lot before anyone could resell it.
This wave was separate from the cyberattack that hit European 30th Celebration orders last month; that one traced back to a CEVA Logistics data breach, not bot enforcement.
Pokemon already restricted some of the priciest 30th Anniversary boxes to Japanese citizens to slow scalpers down, and that earlier batch of cancelled Pokemon Center orders from August means this set has cost fans twice over now.
I’m Abhishek Sharma, an author at TigerJek.com. I enjoy exploring games, testing different strategies, and turning what I learn into clear, useful guides. My goal is to help players understand the game better and improve without the usual confusion.
