Pokémon’s 30th Anniversary “First Partner” Promo Box is a Nostalgia Trap (And Good Luck Finding One Anyway)

Let’s just be completely real for a second. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company aren’t even trying to hide the cash grab this year.

Did you see that piece The Economist just ran? They called Pokémon a “monster hit” three decades later. Like, obviously. The kids who spent their summers squinting at non-backlit Game Boys are now adults with disposable income and terrible spending habits. And the Pokémon Company knows exactly how to drain our bank accounts.

The TCG community is already losing its collective mind over the upcoming First Partner Illustration Collection. It drops on March 20th, and if you haven’t seen the forums yet, let me save you the headache of figuring out why everyone is so mad.

What are we actually paying for here?

MSRP is supposed to be around 50 bucks. You’d think for a massive 30th-anniversary milestone, they’d load it up, right?

Wrong. You are basically paying for a single promo pack.

Sure, they toss in two regular booster packs (one Mega Evolution and one Phantasmal Flames) and a sticker sheet. But nobody cares about the stickers. The entire value of this box hinges on that one special promo pack, which guarantees you exactly three Illustration Rare (IR) cards.

Here is where it gets incredibly toxic

Those three cards are randomly pulled from a pool of nine possible artworks. Series 1 is focused entirely on the starters from Kanto, Sinnoh, and Alola.

Let me translate what that actually means for the market: absolutely everyone is hunting the Kanto trio (Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle). The full-art backgrounds on these cards are undeniably gorgeous. But because it’s a blind “3 out of 9” pull, trying to secure the original three is going to be a nightmare. It’s literally a gacha mechanic printed on cardboard.

The Scalper Problem

Pre-orders are already getting bought out by bots. If the pandemic card boom taught us anything, it’s that the second you put a vintage-style Charmander or Pikachu in a limited anniversary box, the resellers smell blood in the water. Trying to buy this at retail on release day is going to require fighting for your life in a Target checkout line.

My advice? Don’t do it.

Seriously, do not pay double the price to some guy on eBay.

The Pokémon Company has been printing modern sets into the ground lately. The supply will eventually catch up. If you miss the drop on March 20th, just take a breath, wait a month for the hype to die down, and buy the specific single cards you actually want off TCGPlayer.

Let the scalpers sit on their overpriced boxes. Hold the line, guys.

Would you like me to pull up the projected secondary market prices for the individual Kanto starter cards, or should we look at the other anniversary sets dropping later this year?