Random: Thieves Rob 35,000 Pokémon Cards From California Store

"They can take our products, but they can never take away our love of running a local hobby store in our community.”

what a great stance. Such a shame this kind of things happend to those (what seems to be) very nice people

I have no good words for people who steal from small businesses that help the community. I do hope they catch those thieves.

Theft in California? Impossible!
But seriously, screw these thieves.

It was obviously Team Rocket.

Really hope when the robbers get caught they go blasting off (again).

At least it seems like they just took the cards out of robbing principle and not because they must know about how much they can be worth.

Goodness man they are just cards! Hope it was worth it when they get caught.

Looks like there blasting off again. All jokes aside that seriously sucks hope they catch the people who did this.

@Snatcher just cards but 35,000 of them is a lot. Even if they sell them for $1 each, that's a nice sum of money.

@Snatcher if people (mostly adults) treated them that way it would be fine.

There is game shop in my country that sells cards and games, the shop is often full of Pokémon card buyers, because the store also buys rare cards.

And then you see 10 or 15 adult guys stand in your way when you want to buy a game, because they buy a ton of Pokémon cards and immediately sell rare cards to the store.

And there are many places like that, there is even locally a store here that only sells Pokémon cards because any other type of TGC is hidden out of sight, because their customers come for one thing.

And they too also buy your cards...

That is the real issue, the times these things were simple and fun game/hobby is long loooong behind us.

"Gotta steal'em all, Pokemon!"

Holy moly! 35,000 cards! That's at least $2! ...all jokes aside, this is very sad, but also how did they steal 35,000 cards? Like, I know they're thin, but that's still a lot!

I feel so bad for the store owners and employees. And the potential customers. Hope insurance helps. And that those scum bags are caught. Store needs a gofundme.

Human decency seems to get more and more rare every day.

So the thieves got what? 20 chase cards and 34980 bulk?

How low can you go? Crawling guy in this video helped define that.

On a serious note, this proves some people will do very stupid things. Especially to small businesses that are assets to their communities.

They took all the Magikarp cards I hope.
How could they steal all these cards anyway? So many questions about this.

Now they just have to hold them for about 5 years before they become valuable.

It's obvious they don't know much about the collectible card world, it's not a quick buck.

@NinjaNicky not even half of them would be worth more than a $1 or even 0.25 each if it was some random bag of “lottery bulk cards”. Would be surprised if they clear 10k if they didn’t grab any high values.

The cash register depending how busy the day was prior might help though. Card store owners have a good reason not to sweat over this because it sounds like their most valuable collectible cards were left untouched and if majority of their purchases happen digitally anyway

I’m from San Jose, and just started going to this store in December. Great store run by very nice people and it’s sad to see this happen to them.

I haven’t been able to stop by yet since I was trying to save money, but from the video, they didn’t make off with the higher priced items.

The empty glass cases had lower priced Pokemon illustration cards, and behind it were the bulk cards. They probably grabbed some booster boxes that were on the shelf above.

We have a big gaming community over here so I’m sure there are people keeping an eye put for these things getting resold. These thieves didn’t seem to know what to take so I doubt they’ll be informed enough to know the value of any of it and might try to dump it all as bulk on marketplace or to any of the other card stores around like the guy selling the factory stollen cards to the card shop.

@BigBluePanda Unrelated but I love your PFP!

@Rayquaza2510 Imma jump back from a busy life hiatus just to give my two cents to your opinion. Pokémon tcg has always been nuts. In high school ('99-'03) there was a card shop next to our theatre that was packed. There was a comic shop near the mall that was always packed. When you're saying that adults buying and selling cards makes other people have to wait, you're trying to blame the sellers or the hobby. But the shops make the choice to enable your example, and folks make the choice to shop there.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way; but your opinion reads like the store in this article had it coming because they dared to engage in business 🤣

Never been into Pokemon cards (sports trading cards for a bit, yes).

Though of course wish had bought a truckload of the former around 1999 💰💵🤑

@HobbitGamer I don't blame the stores so sorry if it did sound like it.

Pokémon hype was there and that is true, even when I was a kid.

But even 10 years ago, or 20+ the worst that would happen was other kids trying to give you a bad trade deal or steal your card.

Nowdays most stores keep Pokémon cards in a safe or a different room here, because already multiple times stores were robbed at night, even a toy store and they only took cards (regular toy stores only sell the card packs and sets, they don't buy people their cards)

Not to mention multiple times where people got robbed from the cards, not so long ago a guy was robbed because he had multiple first print cards.

Robbed, at his home by armed people.

The least what happens nowdays is people getting agressive when some stores put a limit on how much packs a customer can buy, when a new set comes out.

So yes the hype was there, always but nowdays it got out of the hand at least in my country.

Maybe that in other countries it was always like that, no idea.

@Rayquaza2510 I didn't honestly think ya were, you're an oldie like me 🙂
Those examples are definitely nuts! But then, some states in the US have issues with groups of scum running into stores and stealing a bunch of stuff at once too. I think things like that come down to simple fact that if folks think they can get away with it, they will try. Cuz in those US places, they're super soft on crime. Some instances of home invasions, the home owner gets charged because they shot the invader!
Wouldn't it be something if a card burnt up if it was too far from it's owner, mwah haha

@NinjaNicky oh yeah no doubt they will make a good amount of cash for selling them, but the fact people are just willing to sell so many Pokémon cards let alone steal them is just ridicules.

@Arawn93 10k is still a healthy amount of money though. 5k isn't something I'd turn down either.

@Snatcher I really hope they're dumb enough to try and sell the whole lot in bulk so they get caught. It would finish the story off nicely

Imagine there's some dark web black market Pokemon trading card website

@FlyingBeardedLizard thats not true they been cracking down on these scumbags and giving them harsh sentences for it not just a simple slap on the wrist.

A tripwire and a couple of claymores would have made quick work of that. Or maybe a trap door into a punji spike pit in the basement. Sorry, been watching a lot of Vietnam War movies and television shows.