The great Pokémon card shortage has a solution: 9 billion new cards

polygon.com:

It’s been near impossible to get Pokémon cards over the past few years. Right around the Pokémon franchise’s 25th anniversary, Pokémon cards saw a major resurgence in popularity; whether fueled by pandemic boredom or dreams of getting rich off your Charizard cards, Pokémon cards both new and old were selling out as soon as they hit store shelves. People hoarded McDonald’s Happy Meals for special cards. Retail stores like Target took cards off their shelves, opting to sell goods online only, reportedly because frenzied shoppers created safety concerns in stores. People flooded card-grading services with so many cards from collectors hoping to strike it rich that they had to pause new submissions to work through the backlog.

Last year, The Pokémon Company acknowledged the Pokémon card shortage and announced it was ramping up production to address the high demand.

“We’re aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing certain Pokémon [trading card game] products due to very high demand,” the company said in a tweet. “In response, we are reprinting impacted products at maximum capacity to ensure more fans can enjoy the Pokémon TCG.”

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The Pokémon Company wasn’t kidding. According to data released by The Pokémon Company, it produced more than 9 billion cards in the past year alone. That’s more than double the rate of the year prior, when The Pokémon Company made 3.7 billion cards. (It normally makes between 1 and 2 billion cards a year, Pokémon expert and Serebii webmaster Joe Merrick told Polygon.) To date, more than 43.2 billion cards have been produced since the Pokémon Trading Card Game launched.

More than a quarter of all Pokémon cards printed were produced from 2020 to 2022. There was never really