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Animal Crossing amiibo card scammers targeted by Nintendo

Everything we know about Bunny Day in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Nintendo has devised a scheme to deal with amiibo card scammers trying to screw with players in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The amiibo card allows players to import new villagers to their islands by importing the cards into the game. And just like the small amiibo statues they’re attached to, these cards are very hard to come by. Part of the problem is that artificial scarcity is fully built into the system that Nintendo uses for manufacturing, then there are the scalpers.

With the massive popularity of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a group of people have taken to buying up any amiibo cards they can get their hands on for the game, and reselling them for a much higher price. According to Siliconera.com, however, Nintendo has stepped in to put a stop to these scalpers and scammers from bilking players of exorbitant amounts of cash.

Nintendo has now implemented a regional reservation system in Japan that will allow those interested to pre-order the cards and amiibo sets that they want. Gamers can use Nintendo’s official service to order amiibo cards ahead of time, up to June 30, and these reservations will hold until the unit is produced and shipped.

This system not only completely avoids the secondary market that scalpers are taking advantage of, but it gives Nintendo a clear indication of the demand for their products. This is good for Nintendo as they only have to produce cards in more limited quantities to a degree, leading to a lot less excess for scalpers to also take advantage of.

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Animal Crossing amiibo cards can be bought from the Japanese Nintendo store or via Amazon Japan. Packs will cost ¥330 Japanese Yen, which is equivalent to $3 or £2.50. The packs are not set and are in fact randomized, so there’s no way currently to grab just the cards you want from Nintendo with this new system.

The reservation scheme will include all four series of the Animal Crossing Welcome amiibo series, although the Sanrio series will be excluded from these runs. Nintendo expects these orders to be fulfilled by September.

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