Pokemon Card Shops

5,122 listings in this directory carry the Pokemon tag, spread across 2,585 cities in all 50 states. 2,821 are independent shops; 2,301 are national chain locations.

How a shop gets this tag matters. Pokemon is one of three games the directory assumes at the category level: any business filed under trading card games, or under both categories, is tagged for Pokemon, Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh! together. The reasoning is that those three are close to universal at a dedicated card shop — but it is an assumption applied in bulk, which is why this page, the Magic page and the Yu-Gi-Oh! page cover almost exactly the same shops.

The sharper signal is the smaller one. 26 of these listings match a rule that looks for "Pokemon", "Pikachu" or "Charizard" in the shop's own name or description. Those are the businesses that have chosen to put the game on the sign, and they are the closest thing this dataset has to evidence of a Pokemon focus. It is a floor, not a census — plenty of general game stores run the largest Pokemon league in their county without naming it.

Chain locations make up 45% of the page, which is worth filtering past. The state pages group chains separately for exactly that reason. Heaviest states: Texas (541), California (531), Florida (348), New York (251), and Ohio (208). Heaviest cities: Houston, Texas (47), San Antonio, Texas (47), Las Vegas, Nevada (36), and Brooklyn, New York (29). Across the set, 4,828 carry a phone number, 4,570 post hours, and 4,300 link to a website, and 3,620 carry a Google rating.