I'll be honest, keeping up with Pokemon's 30th anniversary is turning into a part-time job, and this week added three more items to the pile. Two of them you can buy right now. The third is a new set of rules in Japan aimed right at the people who buy everything first.
Beats announced a special-edition Pokemon Beats Pill on October 13th, and it went on sale Thursday, October 15th for $149.99, the standard Pill price. It's one speaker with BOTH Pikachu and Mimikyu on the grill, Pikachu in his electric yellow and Mimikyu in shadowy grays, and it comes with charms for a Poke Ball, the Beats "b" logo and Pikachu's lightning bolts, per MacRumors.
The specs match the regular Pill, with up to 24 hours of battery life, IP67 dust and water resistance, and a USB-C port that can charge your phone. In the US you can grab it from Apple.com or Target, and MacRumors reports the only other markets are the UK (Apple and Argos) and China (Apple and Douyin).
Check out the official film Beats made for it below!
Razer jumped in the same day with three gaming headsets developed with The Pokemon Company International. There's a Charizard and a Lucario edition of the wireless BlackShark V3 X HyperSpeed, plus a Sylveon edition of the wired Kraken V4 X done up in pink and blue with Chroma RGB lighting. Razer's announcement bills the whole lineup as part of the 30th anniversary celebration, and CGMagazine reports launch pricing of $119.99 for each BlackShark and $109.99 for the Sylveon.
As of October 15th, Target has the Charizard and Lucario at $139.99 apiece and the Sylveon at $109.99. CGMagazine also reports that the Lucario and Sylveon are Target exclusives in the US, while the Charizard is sold at both Target and Razer.com.
That means Target is charging $20 more for the Charizard than Razer.com, where it's $119.99!
Starting October 13th, LINE Yahoo banned three kinds of Pokemon card listings on Yahoo! Auctions and Yahoo! Flea Market in Japan. Sellers can no longer list cards by the carton (multiple booster boxes still in their wholesale packaging), can't list empty boxes or empty packs, and can't dump large quantities of the same product on the site for a set period after release. That last rule starts with Pokemon Card Game 30th Celebration, according to LINE Yahoo's announcement, which doesn't spell out the exact quantity or time window. This is the Japanese-language version, a separate product from the English set that hit US shelves in September.
The Pokemon Company is backing the move, too! The two companies have had a cooperation agreement since July 2023, and Pokemon will now share information with LINE Yahoo about products and distribution that could lead to trouble on the secondhand market. As Dexerto points out, the rules stop short of a blanket ban on reselling cards, and they only apply in Japan.
Why should US fans care? Because the 30th anniversary has already been a scalper free-for-all over here. When Pokemon TCG: 30th Celebration landed in September, we reported that GameStop was listing the $49.99 Elite Trainer Box for up to $129.99, and Dick's Sporting Goods was charging two to three times MSRP on the set.
Dexerto notes that no similar measures exist outside Japan, and the US resale market will flip just about anything with a Pikachu on it.
Even the Pokemon Krispy Kreme donuts ended up on eBay for hundreds of dollars!
Would you want eBay and the other US marketplaces to copy Japan's carton and empty-box bans before the next big set hits shelves?
Sound off in the comments below!
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