A heist at a trading card hobby shop in Osaka, Japan, on September 9 ended with the thieves walking away with over $70,000 worth of collectible cards. The robbery is yet another in a long string of thefts around the world involving Pokémon cards.
The store specialized in Pokémon cards, of course. A pair of masked men barged into the store armed with knives. They tied up two employees and went on to steal over 100 Pokémon cards valued at over ¥10 million, which equates to around $70,000. They also took two smartphones and ¥250,000 in cash.
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The incident went down soon after the employees wrapped up a livestream event for customers interested in purchasing cards. Both workers were unharmed, making it much easier to report this next detail about the robbery: The thieves didn’t know the first thing about Pokémon card values.
Presumably, they just heard that they were worth a ton, so they decided to rob a Pokémon card shop to see what they could get. Then, they asked the employees for advice on which cards to steal. The thieves followed the employees’ advice and made off with their suggestions.
The value of Pokémon cards spiked during the pandemic. Global economies suffered from inflation, and the Pokémon card market suffered from massive inflation, too, boosted by celebrites like Logan Paul and Post Malone. And it’s not just Pokémon. Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic: The Gathering cards have also skyrocketed in value.
There have been massive collectible card heists cropping up in the news with some regularity ever since. Last year, thieves stole over $300,000 worth of trading cards at the Gen Con gaming convention in Indiana. This summer, a group of thieves stole approximately $2 million worth of baseball cards from a dealer at the Dallas Card Show in Allen, Texas.
