Chain Stores to Receive Up to 250 Copies of Pikachu Van Gogh Promos, Stepping Up Security

As we reported last week, the Van Gogh Pikachu promo distribution will begin this Saturday in the Netherlands (and Game Mania stores in Belgium, for some reason).

We’ve now confirmed chain stores will receive between 25 and 250 copies of the promo to give to customers. The amount depends on the size of the individual store.

Smaller stores will receive either 25 or 50 copies. Intertoys and Media Markt, which are the largest chains, will receive 100 or 250 copies. Both chains have over 260 stores combined.

As expected, some of the stores will be stepping up their security to insure the promotion is handled fairly.

At Intertoys and Media Markt, the card will have to be scanned and listed on your receipt. This means the stores can track how many cards go out. It also means the card can’t be distributed before February 10th.

Game Mania stores will require your membership card before handing out the promo. This means customers will not be able to get a second promo at a different Game Mania store.

Initially, hobby stores were supposed to receive 100 copies of the card. However, TPCi lowered the amount to 10 after incidents of pre-scalping.

While we don’t know how many copies of the card TPCi printed, one objective is clear: the company intends for this to be a large promotion. There are over 1,000 chain stores in the Netherlands that are eligible to distribute this promo card. We previously estimated there could be at least 100,000 copies of the promo injected into the global supply.

Since last week’s news, the price of the card has plummeted in Europe. The American market is taking longer to respond, but should take a hit once the card is released and makes its way to American sellers.