Pokemon Card Thieves Finding New Ways to Steal From Card Shops

Pokemon cards have been the target of theft for decades, but their recent increase in value has upped the criminal activity surrounding the hobby, and card shops are having a rather tough time dealing with thieves stealing highly desirable cards.

A security camera footage from an Osaka card shop showed a man using one of the latest tricks to steal Pokemon cards.

At around 3:20 p.m. on September 20th, a man appeared at the store wearing an orange hat and yellow tank top. “I want to see the cards in the show glass,” he asked the staff as he chatted happily.

After looking at a few cards, the customer ended up not paying anything, and 20 minutes later, another customer came in to purchase a card, which resulted in the loss of 300,000 yen for the shop.

The first customer asked if he could see one card after another, and while the staff was getting the next card from the cabinet, the customer placed a price tag of 498,000 yen on top of the 798,000 yen tag on a Pikachu card. The act was caught on camera, as seen in the above image. The following customer, who showed up 20 minutes later, purchased the card for 498,000 yen.

The card shop owner doesn’t expect his staff to know the market price of all cards, so he didn’t blame them for letting it happen, but he mostly wanted to spread awareness so other card shops don’t fall victim to similar crimes.