Hobby store owner says Pokémon 30th Celebration allocations were as small as one Elite Trainer Box

Scott Thorne, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois, wrote in his September 28, 2026 ICv2 column that talk of a Pokemon TCG: 30th Celebration glut does not match what hobby retail is seeing. One distributor, he says, sent his store a single Elite Trainer Box, not a case. Most of his suppliers now ration Pokémon by allocation: a store gets what it is given, not what it ordered, and refused units go to the next store.

Thorne believes The Pokémon Company is steering most of the product to mass-market chains, citing customers’ accounts of queues at Target and Sam’s Club. That is his inference; the column gives no channel figures. He also says running an energetic organised-play program is hard to justify when stores cannot stock the product. He discloses owning Hasbro and Nintendo shares.

Jay’s Toys & Games said in a September 7 launch guide that quantities are allocated by its distributor, and that it would not know final counts until the cases arrived.