Let’s not rule out yet that it’s due to Team Rocket.
The pokemon collectibles They have always been the target of thieves due to the enormous value they reach in the market, for example, some cards from the official Pokémon game, but according to the latest reports, the number of robberies has skyrocketed in this type of establishments in Japan. In the last of them, the thieves managed to steal objects worth over $58,000.
As we can read in this Wall Street Journal story, a few days ago, a group of thieves broke through the security shutters of one of the shops in the suburbs of Tokyo, broke the shop windows and took cards from the Pokémon game. Between them, Pikachu and Squirtle trading cards.
The real-life Team Rocket is dedicated to stealing Pokémon cards
“i thought i was donesaid Kenta Hosaka, the 33-year-old owner of the shop that was robbed. They had taken their most expensive cards, together they were worth $58,000. And it is not the only case, stores across the country are being affected by a wave of pokemon card draw where the thieves came to rappel down from a rooftop to sneak into one of the locals.
pokemon cards”They’ve become like Rolex watches, gold, silver, platinum or used cars”, assured Osaka, who before opening her store worked in the care of the elderly. The fever for everything related to Pokémon is nothing new these days, but apparently, since the outbreak of the COVID pandemicthe demand for official game cards has multiplied and, although the company promised to increase production, the number of robberies in establishments of this type has occurred.
Last May, two other Pokémon card stores, one near Mount Fuji and the other on the island of Kyushu, were robbed and, from the last one, they took near 600 cards worth $47,000. In August of last year, another robbery at a Tokyo store resulted in $200,000 loss and 540 letters stolenaccording to the police report.
Even so, the most surreal robbery of all it happened last November, in the famous neighborhood of Akihabara (Tokyo), in a narrow alley next to a ramen restaurant. So just one day after its inauguration, the store woke up with the broken blind and 800 missing Pokémon cards, which reached a value of $ 182,000. “We couldn’t believe this was happening so soon,” said store manager Kakeru Okubo.
Without a doubt, there seems to be a whole organization of thugs behind Pokémon cards for resell them on the black market. We will see if the authorities of the Japanese country manage to put an end to this crime wave or continues to worsen in the coming months. Of course, it is much cheaper to play Pokémon GO.