Summary
The world of thePokémon Trading Card Gamehas become an interesting one in recent years. Prices ballooned around 2019 as rare Pokémon cards became valuable collector’s items, which inevitably brought an army of scalpers, and occasionally thieves.
These ne’er-do-wells tend to target game shops, stealing the businesses' rarest cards, which tend to be on display around the store in display cases. There have been numerous cases of game stories being burgled - lots of these thieves disappear into the night and are never apprehended, while others are caught red-handed and their ill-gotten gains recovered.
Crime Doesn’t Pay
One of the biggest ever stolen Pokémon card recoveries occurred a couple of days ago in Hyde, a town in the borough of Tameside on the east side of Manchester (thanks,GameSpot).
“An interesting warrant in Hyde yesterday morning, supported by your neighbourhood policing teams,” Tameside Police wrote in aFacebook post. “Seizure of thousands of stolen, high-value Pokémon cards with an estimated worth of over £250,000 ($331,000). Attempts will now be made to return the cards to their original owners. One male arrested. Gotta catch ‘em all.”
A fantastic closing line, to be sure. The post was accompanied by several pictures of the recovered goods, which show off unopened booster packs and rare graded cards. There are two grade ten pulls that we can see in the pictures, one is a Paldean Fates Charizard Ex, and the other is a Silver Tempest Lugia V full art. Both are worth hundreds of dollars.
As you’ve probably observed, the Pokémon TCG has become a lot more erratic and money-crazed since the market took off several years ago. The introduction of money-making opportunities to the Pokémon TCG resale market has sparked several thefts, lots of speculative finance and, naturally, a distant hope in everyone opening a booster pack that they’re about to hit big.
For those of us who don’t engage in that sort of thing, we always have TCG Pocket to tide us over.
