It happens a few times a week now. Somebody comes up to the counter, buys a disposable or a lighter, and then asks the same question: “Hey, do you guys have Pokémon cards?”
We don’t. But we understand completely why people keep asking, and we got tired of just saying “nope” and watching somebody walk back out to their car with nowhere to go.
Why People Keep Asking A Smoke Shop For Pokémon Cards
Because a lot of smoke shops genuinely do carry them now.
This is not a weird question. Plenty of shops like ours genuinely do deal in cards now. There’s a six location smoke and vape chain in Colorado that runs a whole Pokémon page, and they don’t just sell them, they buy and trade collections off the counter. Once one shop in a market starts doing that, the question gets asked at every other counter in town.
The demand behind it is not small either. Target and Walmart have both reported trading cards as one of their fastest growing categories, which is why product keeps spilling into stores that never used to sell it.
It has gotten common enough that shops carrying sealed product have become targets. A smoke shop in Gilbert, Arizona was broken into at 4am and had four boxes of Pokémon cards stolen, and local police there have said card theft is a trend they are actively watching. That is not something that happens to a product category nobody stocks.
So if you’ve walked into a smoke shop somewhere else and found a rack of booster packs by the register, you weren’t imagining it. It’s just not us, at least not yet.
Why We Don’t Carry Them Yet
A few reasons, and none of them are “we don’t like Pokémon.”
Cards are a different business. Sealed product moves at prices that swing week to week, counterfeits are a real and growing problem in convenience stores specifically, and telling a real pack from a fake one takes somebody who handles them constantly. Until we’re able to tell the difference ourselves, we would rather send you to people who do that all day than sell you something we can’t stand behind.
There’s also the honest version: we’re good at vapes, glass, and hemp. We’re not card people yet. Sticking to what we actually know is why people trust the recommendations we do make.
That said, we’re paying attention. The question comes up enough that we’ve talked about it, and if we ever do put cards on the counter we’ll do it properly: learn the product first, buy from real distributors, and be able to tell you exactly what you’re holding. If that’s something you’d want from us, tell us next time you’re in. It genuinely factors into the decision.
Where To Actually Buy Cards Around Here
The answer is your local game store. These are the shops that run tournaments and league nights, sell singles as well as sealed, and have somebody behind the counter who can tell you in about four seconds whether a card is real.
The problem is that most of them are genuinely hard to find. They tend to sit in strip malls and second-floor units, a lot of them don’t put their inventory online at all, and searching usually just surfaces national marketplaces instead of the shop fifteen minutes away.
The most useful thing we’ve found is a free directory of local card shops that carry Pokémon, which lists shops by city and shows what’s actually in stock at the ones that publish it. It’s not a store, it just points you at real shops.
For anyone near our locations, here’s what’s actually out there. You can see the full breakdown of Wyoming game stores by city:
- Cheyenne has 5 game stores, the most in the state
- Casper has 3
- Laramie has 2
- Gillette has 1
- Rock Springs has 1
Over in Nevada, Reno has 9 and Sparks has another 5, so if you’re up by our Reno stores you have real options within a short drive.
North Dakota is thinner. If you’re at our Dickinson store, the nearest real selection is Bismarck, which has 6.
We’ll be straight with you: if you’re in Gillette or Rock Springs, one shop is one shop, and it may not have the specific thing you want on a given day. That’s worth a phone call before you drive.
If You Do Buy Cards At A Gas Station, Watch For This
No judgment, sometimes convenience wins. Just know two things going in.
Counterfeits show up in gas stations more than other stores. The tells are usually the back of the card, the texture on holos, and the print quality on the small text. Hold a suspect card up to a light. Real cards have a thin dark layer in the middle and won’t let much light through. If you’re unsure, The Pokémon Company publishes its own guidance on spotting fakes, and any local game store will check one for you for free.
You’re paying for convenience, and that’s a real markup. Packs at a counter often run well above what a shop charges, sometimes 20 to 50 percent more. That’s fine if you just want to open something tonight. It’s not fine if you’re buying several, in which case the fifteen minute drive pays for itself.
The Short Version
We don’t sell Pokémon cards today. Maybe that changes down the road, and if it does you’ll hear it from us here first. For now the question comes up often enough that we figured we’d write down a real answer instead of shrugging.
Find a local game store. Call ahead if you’re in a smaller town. And if somebody at a counter tells you they can’t authenticate what they’re selling you, believe them, because that’s exactly what we just told you.