Pokémon traders are allegedly offering puppies in exchange for valuable cards

A couple of viral videos show instances of people trying to acquire Pokémon trading cards by offering French bulldog puppies.

Interest in the Pokémon trading card game has only skyrocketed in recent years, but not because more people are interested in playing. Instead, plenty of grown adults are keen on snapping up cards so they can acquire the rarest ones and sell them off at exorbitant prices.

There have been instances of scalpers buying multiple McDonald’s Happy Meals because they came with exclusive cards and some stores that specialise in trading cards have been targets of robbery.

Now, a couple of videos have gone viral within the community for showing people trying to obtain valuable Pokémon cards by offering to trade puppy dogs for them.

One Pokémon card collector named pickleqw33n on Instagram happened to capture such an incident on video when someone came to her table with a French bulldog puppy and offered to exchange it for a trading card.

While she couldn’t verify if this person bred the dogs themselves, pickleqw33n alleges in a follow up video that she is seeing ‘more instances’ of this at card shows in the US.

She also expresses hope that card shows and other such events can be pressured into banning these sorts of trades.

It’s unclear how widespread this really is, but there has been at least one other recorded instance from earlier this month of someone trying to barter for Pokémon cards with a dog.

In a YouTube short by card vendor B&B Collectibles, a man approaches the table with a French bulldog puppy looking to make a trade and alleging that the dog is worth $10,000 (about £7,400).

Naturally, this has sparked outraged reactions online. ‘It’s actually sad that people have gotten so addicted to cardboard they will legitimately trade anything for the right card,’ says Specialist-Yak-453 in a Pokémon TCG Collectors subreddit.

‘Team Rocket getting truly diabolical with this one,’ writes antipathizer.

Plenty of people assume that these traders are puppy farmers and thus are concerned for the health of the dogs. Shudmirelurk claims the one in the B&B Collectibles video is ‘one of those gross ‘designer’ mixed dogs that have tonnes of health problems and usually die young.’

Word of this has even spread outside of the Pokémon community and made its way to places like the Not The Onion subreddit.

‘Unsurprising that backyard breeders and card scalpers find an alliance in each other,’ reads the top comment by GerbilFeces.

‘Breeding any flat face breed needs to be made illegal with huge animal cruelty-type punishments,’ adds bestestopinion.

Others claim to have had similar encounters with these sorts of breeders, such as drsilentfart saying they were offered a puppy in exchange for their car. ZealotsReward444 claims to know someone trying to obtain trading cards by offering Bengal kittens instead.

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