GameStop Puts Trolls On Notice After Record-Shattering $30,000 Trade-In
Infamous gaming pawn shop chain GameStop says someone just walked into its Grapevine, Texas headquarters and traded in a PSA-10 holographic Gengar, supposedly worth $33,883, and walked out with $30,494.70. In simpler terms: GameStop just paid someone a little over thirty grand for a Pokémon card.
It didn't take long for the internet to respond, and the replies on the X post are hilarious, but this reply from "meme bastard" more or less sums up the reaction:
You see, that's the part GameStop left out. A PSA-10 1st Edition Holo Gengar is not some obscure niche oddity. It's one of the crown jewels of the vintage Pokémon TCG market, with public auction sales sometimes blowing past six figures. Even conservative estimates place it well above the $33.8k "fair-market valuation" GameStop declared in its post.
GameStop insists the trade followed all "inspection, verification, and compliance procedures" under its Power Packs Buyback Program, a relatively new initiative that lets customers trade high-value collectibles—cards, sealed products, and other graded items—for cash or store credit. The program is meant to give the retailer a foothold in the booming TCG aftermarket, where third-party grading, authentication, and resale premiums can inflate a good pull into a mortgage payment.
That model only works if the buyback numbers make sense. Here, they arguably don't. If the card is real (GameStop says it was "fully authenticated") and in the advertised PSA 10 condition, then GameStop just scored one of the cleanest margins the Pokémon market has seen in years. If GameStop intends to resell it, it either made an absolute steal—or it's about to learn how quickly the internet turns on someone when they're just a little bit too smug.
The company clearly hoped to turn this into a victory lap, but instead, it has wandered directly into the same old punchline: GameStop trade-ins usually look bad because the math usually is bad. Dressing it up with a six-figure collectible doesn't change the arithmetic; it just puts a spotlight on it. Of course, that's probably the point; this stunt serves to promote the company's Power Packs Buyback Program, and we're playing directly into it the effort by reporting on it. So, 10 points to GameStop, we suppose.
Top image: Mike Mozart (CC-BY-SA 2.0)
