Fake Pokemon Card Lands Shop Keeper in Jail

gamerant.com:

Pokemon cards were first released in 1996 and remain big business today. While the competitive side of this card game does remain popular, it’s the collecting side where things have really ramped up. The trading and swapping of Pokemon cards bolstered continues as strong as ever. Now the rarest of cards can be sold individually for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

With price tags this big for items so seemingly able to be replicated, it’s no wonder that fakes have become a scourge on serious collectors ofPokemon cards. Forgeries have meant ThePokemon Company has had to increase the intricacies of authentication marks on each card. Also, sites like eBay have had to introduce authentication for sellers ofPokemon cards.

Burglar Steals $250,000 worth of Pokemon Cards From Gaming Collectibles Shop

It is hard to crack down on physical stores, however. Wherever booster packs are sold for the game, stores may set out individual rarer cards for sale. This is what happened recently in the Mie prefecture of Japan, where a retro game store owner was arrested for sale of a ¥2,200 (around $20)Pokemon card in December 2021. He also allegedly had for sale a fake copy ofMega Man, named Rockman in Japan.

The 48-year-old owner, Yukinori Harada, admitted to police upon his arrest that he thought the card might have been fake when he sold it. Police also confiscated 150 other collectable cards and video games that were suspected of being fake. Mr Harada was charged with copyright violation, but his arrest was more likely over the amount of time he’d been suspected of selling forgeries, rather than the sale of one $20 card. The store itself, Alive Yokkaichi Tokiwa, has pledged to remain open in a tweet sent out apologizing for the