The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has stopped the give-away of an exclusive Pokémon card due to safety reasons. The card is so popular that people line up every day to get their hands on the piece of cardboard. Sometimes resulting in incidents. To ensure the safety of visitors and staff, the museum has decided to discontinue the giveaway.
As part of its Pokémon x Van Gogh exhibition, The Pokémon Company launched a whole line-up of merchandise in collaboration with the museum. Anyone who purchased one of the items received the free but exclusive promo card ‘Pikachu with Gray Felt Hat’ with their purchase. On the day the promotion started, the museum was overrun by scalpers who wanted to get their hands on the card.
It didn’t take long before ‘Pikachu with Gray Felt Hat’ found its way onto auction sites, where the card was sold for ridiculous extortionate prices. However, the fuss to obtain the card continued. And so the museum announced last Friday that it would no longer give away the promotional card. Quite striking, considering the exhibition has only been going on for a few weeks and will run until January 7.
The official statement on the website reads as follows:
“The Van Gogh Museum and The Pokémon Company International take the safety of visitors and employees very seriously. Due to recent incidents where a small group of individuals created an undesirable situation, we have made the difficult decision to no longer make the special Pikachu x Van Gogh Museum promotional card available in the museum. This way, visitors can experience this special collection of paintings and the rest of the museum in a safe and enjoyable way.”
Very understandable, although we fear that The Pokémon Company is only shifting the problem. Online, the scalper bots are probably already waiting to completely buy up the next stock of Pokémon x Van Gogh merchandise.