Costco did not discontinue Pokemon.
The rumor that's been bouncing around Facebook groups and Discord servers for over a year traces back to one source. A single Facebook user quoted in a February 16, 2025 US Sun article. The same article admitted Costco had "yet to hear back." Costco never confirmed it. Pokemon TCG product is still on costco.com today.
That's the whole bust. The rest of this is what's actually happening at retail.
Where the Rumor Came From
The US Sun ran the piece on February 16, 2025. The quote was lifted from a Facebook user: "Just heard Costco not only is NOT going to carry Blooming Waters, but also has discontinued carrying any future sets."
The article itself said the Sun reached out to Costco and was "yet to hear back." That "yet" never resolved. Fifteen months later there is still no Costco statement on Pokemon. No press release. No memo. No corporate confirmation.
A Facebook user heard something from someone. That became "Costco discontinued Pokemon" in collector circles. That is the whole evidence chain.
What Costco Actually Sells Right Now
Pull up costco.com/trading-cards.html. Pokemon TCG product is listed there as of this week.
Paldea Partners Tins. Scarlet & Violet 151 Ultra Premium Collection. Those are not artifacts from a discontinued program. Those are active SKUs.
April 2026 in Mississauga, Ontario, a Costco warehouse held a Prismatic Evolutions drop that drew 30 to 40 people in line by 6:45 a.m. Reporting from Dexerto, MobileSyrup, and GameSpot covered the scene. Coffee thrown on a cart. A car struck a cart and sent packs flying across the lot. The driver ran over packs on the ground and fled. Police on-site, vehicle towed.
You do not get a parking-lot incident over a product the chain discontinued.
The Actual Story: Purchase Limits
What people are running into at Costco is not absence. It is restriction.
Limits at physical warehouses vary by location. Typical reported ranges sit between 3 and 10 packages per customer. Specific costco.com SKUs are documented at 1 transaction and 2 units per membership per day. Per Eat This and US Sun coverage.
Per warehouse. Per SKU. Per membership. That is the structure. If your local Costco is enforcing tighter limits than the one two cities over, that is not a corporate Pokemon pullout. That is a single warehouse making its own call.
The Pokemon Company Quietly Updated Its T&C
This is the part most collectors missed. In May 2025, The Pokemon Company updated its terms of use to explicitly back retailer purchase limits. The language is live on pokemoncenter.com/terms-of-use.
"We may place a limit on the quantities that may be purchased per order, per account, per credit card, per person, or per household. We reserve the right, without prior notice, to refuse service to any customer or reject any order at any time and refund any money you have paid for such order."
Per order. Per account. Per credit card. Per person. Per household. That is five separate axes of enforcement written into the official terms. US Sun first reported the change in May 2025.
GameStop followed the same pattern. Effective May 30, 2025, for the Destined Rivals launch, GameStop capped new TCG releases at 1 of each product and 5 booster packs per customer.
The retailer crackdown is real. The retailer exodus is not.
Target Is Leaning All the Way In
If you want the counterweight to the "retailers are quitting Pokemon" narrative, look at Target's last three weeks.
Target announced the 30 Years of Pokemon collection on April 15, 2026. In-store May 2. Online May 3. 100+ exclusive items across apparel, accessories, home goods, food, and beverage. Two phases, roughly 65 items at launch and another 40 on June 6. Nearly half the assortment under $20. Entry pricing at $3.50.
Brand collabs hit the nostalgia button hard. Mead bringing back the Trapper Keeper. Caboodles. Lip Smacker. A first-of-its-kind Pokemon Starter jacket from the original Starter brand. Joe Jonas led the campaign as a longtime Pokemon fan.
Gigi Guerra, Target VP Creative Curation, on the deal: "We know our guests love Pokemon, and we worked with the brand to make this 30th celebration really fun and exciting."
Whatever you think of how the launch played out at store level (and we wrote about that already), Target signed up to be the marquee anniversary partner for the most valuable IP on earth. That is the opposite of a retailer backing away.
The Historical Irony
The retailer the rumor mill swears is quitting Pokemon (Costco) is the one that never quit. The retailer that actually did pull Pokemon in 2021 is now the 30th anniversary headline partner.
On May 7, 2021, a 35-year-old man was assaulted in a Wisconsin Target parking lot by four people over sports cards. The victim had a concealed-carry permit and drew his weapon. No shots fired. All four attackers were arrested. CNBC, Game Informer, PokeBeach, and Fortune all covered the fallout.
On May 14, 2021, Target pulled MLB, NFL, NBA, and Pokemon trading cards from in-store sales nationwide. Online sales continued.
Target later reversed the pull and brought trading cards back to shelves. Five years on, Target is the only U.S.-based mass retailer partnered with The Pokemon Company for the 30th. The retailer that actually pulled is now leaning hardest in.
The rumor flow has the polarity wrong.
What Collectors Should Actually Do
Stop chasing screenshots of a Facebook post from last winter.
Check costco.com before you assume your local warehouse is out of the program. Call your warehouse to confirm the per-customer limit on a given SKU. Expect chaos at major drops (see Mississauga). Read the Pokemon Center terms of use. Understand that GameStop is enforcing 1 product / 5 booster packs, that Costco is varying limits by location, and that Target is running the biggest licensed Pokemon push of the decade.
Retailers are not the bottleneck. Print capacity is. Millennium Print Group is running at capacity, and the announced campus expansion is not slated to be fully operational for years. That is the actual supply ceiling.
Costco didn't quit. The retailers cracked down. The Pokemon Company wrote the limits into its terms. Target signed the marquee deal. And the packs that aren't on shelves aren't off shelves because retailers walked away. They're not there because they were never printed in the first place.
