By Kotaku | Created at 2026-09-20 21:35:48 | Updated at 2026-09-20 22:48:47
2 hours ago
Sorry Mewtwo, there’s a new, ominous descendant to the cherubic all powerful Pokémon. To celebrate the series’ 30th anniversary, and ease tensions around short supplies, The Pokémon Company released a commemorative set with a much higher pull rate for shiny variants and beloved Pikachus. Of course, this was never going to stop the collection circuit, who have now focused their attention on an especially cursed misprint of number 151.
Labelled “Blood Mew” by card trader Miss Natoshi, the normally very somber, graceful new Mew card apparently suffered a run of misprints. Now instead of a golden magical grove, Mew is descending (or ascending, depending on the printer error) into a pool of red ink saturated across half the card. Despite best intentions for the new set to be more equitable for all players, an intense amount of focus has already piled on to misprinted cards, with resellers asking as high as six figures for these paper mishaps. Bathed in blood, this accidental variant has quickly become the latest prize, and resellers are already testing the waters on how much it’ll fetch online.
Crazy blood mew misprint on TWO cards.
Do you think someone is going to pay up for these? pic.twitter.com/Fwbg1wPJUy
— MISSNATOSHI 👸🏻 (@missnatoshi) September 18, 2026
As collectors see dollar signs everywhere, defected products can be considered even more valuable due to their unforeseen scarcity. Earlier this year, 404 Media spotted a Yu-Gi-Oh card seller with abnormal access to uncut, factory sheets of the Blue Eyes Silver Dragon. While claimed to have come out of the dumpster, some in the community believed the anonymous merchant was sitting on a million’s worth of illegitimate stock.
Pokémon collectors, of course, take everything to the extreme, and over the last few years hoarding any and all merch have caused headaches for retailers, collectors, Nintendo themselves and a few fire marshals. Shiny, holographic cards can add further room for weird looking misprints. But if there’s a recurring glitch in the system, that newfound misfit can be made desirable. Even if the particulars feel like a warning scrawled on the gates of hell.
