Every day, I get sad that Pokémon aren’t real, but sometimes we get real-world amalgamations of their world in ours. Team Rocket and all their monster-stealing ways may not be an actual organization, but we’ve got plenty of people committing pocket monster crimes here on Earth. A recent example is a man in the UK’s Tameside, Manchester who was arrested for stealing a bunch of Pokémon trading cards valued at around £250,000, or $332,500 for us Americans.
British Tameside Police posted about the arrest on its Facebook page (thanks, GameSpot), where it sends out images of mugshots, people with warrants, and updates on operations for the locals. It said it found “thousands” of stolen cards, estimated to be worth a quarter of a million pounds. This included several unopened booster packs, as well as some rare graded cards valued at hundreds of pounds on their own. The police are making attempts to return them to their original owners. Some of the cards found included a grade 10 Charizard ex Special Illustration Rare from Paldean Fates, and the Silver Tempest Lugia V full-art also in a PSA 10, both of which are worth hundreds of dollars.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game has become an extremely volatile hobby to get in on in recent years, thanks to the increase in scalpers and resellers who have infected the market. Just two weeks ago, someone was beaten and robbed for a $5000 Charizard card. There are viral videos of adults fighting to buy cards, camping out in front of the card section at grocery stores, waiting for workers to restock cards, and when The Pokémon Company puts on big events like the Van Gogh Museum exhibit in 2023, it quickly becomes something like a chaotic Black Friday horror story. It’s lucrative for scalpers, but good lord, the crimes people commit for this shit is insane.
If you want the dopamine drip of a good pull but don’t want to fight other people for it, might I suggest Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket on your mobile device?