War Declared On Nintendo Switch 2 Scalpers With Strict Auction Ban
It should come as no surprise that scalpers are already flooding auction sites with listings for Nintendo's upcoming Switch 2 console, which releases to retail on June 5, 2025 (a week from this Thursday). It happens with every new piece of highly anticipated hardware, and it only adds to the issue of there not being enough supply to meet demand. To combat this, Nintendo has partnered with several marketplaces in Japan to curb unauthorized Switch 2 listings.
Participating entities include Mercari, Rakuma, and Yahoo via its Yahoo Auction and Yahoo Flea Market marketplaces.
"We have agreed to work together in an effort to prevent unauthorized listing of our related products, including the Nintendo Switch 2," Nintendo states in a notice on its site in Japan (via Google Translate). "Nintendo and the three service operators are active by service operators for fraudulent listing of products related to us, including 'Nintendo Switch 2', which violates the terms and conditions of each service operator. In addition, we will proceed with measures such as building a partnership system including information sharing."
These are some of the biggest marketplaces in Japan. Furthermore, Yahoo has taken its partnership with Nintendo a step further by explicitly banning all Switch 2 listings, a sweeping move it said was designed to avoid any confusion.
"Yahoo! At the auction, the 'Nintendo Switch 2' body...may cause confusion in the trading environment due to its high level of topicality and may result in fraudulent listing. We will ban the issue for the time being," Yahoo stated (via Google Translate).
We have no doubt that bits and pieces are getting lost or otherwise jumbled in translation. However, the gist of Yahoo's action is that Switch 2 auctions are temporarily prohibited. We'll have to wait and see if this changes once the Switch 2 actually releases to retail.
As we wrote about before, whatever preparations Nintendo made to bolster its Switch 2 supply ahead of launch, the efforts have fallen short. And somehow or another, Nintendo was caught off guard by the preorder situation at the official My Nintendo Store in Japan, where around 2.2 million interested buyers signed up for a special Switch 2 preorder lottery program.
"Even including the number of units for the second lottery sale, we cannot fulfill all of the applications we received. We deeply apologize for not being able to meet your expectations despite our advance preparations. In response to this demand, we are currently working on further strengthening our production system," Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said on X at the time (via X's translation tool).
Unfortunately, while the auction ban at Yahoo may have an impact on scalpers, it is not a widespread one. Over on eBay, for example, we spotted a rash of listings for the Switch 2 that are way above MSRP. This includes listings that have already ended with buyer, many of which ended at around the $630-$650 mark (plus shipping!). We've even seen listings attract buyers at north of $700.
Our advice is the same as it always in this situation—be patient and don't feed the scalpers. Also be sure to check out our Switch 2 purchase/preorder strategy guide.
