Thieves used a pickup truck to smash through the rear doors of a Tacoma, Washington, card shop early Monday and made off with roughly $50,000 in Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards, as reported by KOMO News. Northwest Sportscards has since hired overnight security guards, and Tacoma police said it was the second time in four months that a pickup was used to break through the shop’s rear metal doors.
Store surveillance video shows a black Dodge pickup bashing open the rear entrance shortly after 5:00 AM. Two masked thieves then ran inside with totes and cleared merchandise from the shelves and the storeroom.
“It’s scary. They came in with a lot of force, in and out in just a couple of minutes,” owner Don Knutsen told KOMO. “They came in looking for Pokémon. They ended up getting a lot of Magic as well.” Knutsen said the thieves filled the whole bed of their truck, and he believes the burglary was well rehearsed.
Sealed boxes make these cards a lot harder to track
Many of the stolen cards were in sealed boxes with no serial numbers or identifying marks, which makes them far harder to trace than graded sports cards. Knutsen said he is now keeping a close watch on the markets where stolen cards might be resold.
Trading cards have drawn more attention from thieves as their values have climbed, and Knutsen said rising prices have brought more demand and more incentive to steal them. The Pokémon Trading Card Game also has a competitive scene, where top Pokémon TCG players face off at major events…