Just when I thought I had seen it all, something like this comes along.
A scalper has listed a single 2026 Pokémon Trading Card Game Mega Evolution 30th Celebration Elite Trainer Box for a staggering $270, more than five times the product’s $49.99 MSRP.
The seller’s justification for the markup? They claim the higher price reflects the cost of spending nine hours waiting in line to purchase the box.
By that math, they're effectively charging about $24.44 for every hour they spent standing in line.
The situation highlights the increasingly aggressive resale market surrounding popular products. Limited releases and high demand can make certain items difficult to find at retail, creating opportunities for scalpers to buy products at MSRP and immediately relist them at substantial markups.
Whether the box ultimately sells for $270 remains to be seen. But if it does, the seller may have found a rather lucrative way to turn nine hours of waiting in line into a paycheck.
Interestingly, the seller’s $24.44-per-hour “wage” for waiting in line is higher than the highest minimum wage in the United States. Washington, D.C., currently has the nation’s highest minimum wage at $18.40 per hour.
The irony gets even better when you consider that the seller is effectively asking for more money than many of the employees working at the very store where the product was purchased.
Meanwhile, retail employees can spend their shifts stocking shelves, helping customers, operating registers, and keeping the store running, only to earn less per hour than what this scalper believes their time was worth for simply waiting in line.