Pokémon card heist goes terribly wrong... for the thief

polygon.com:

Pokémon fans around the internet have likely seen the photo by now: A table stacked with hundreds, maybe thousands, of rare cards from The Pokémon Trading Card Game, all sitting in tidy piles, alongside rumors of theft and conspiracy. The image emerged over the weekend in a private Facebook group, before rocketing to the top of Reddit.

The cards had been allegedly stolen directly from the printer — how else could one person get their hands on so many rare Pokémon cards? Some players believed that the theft resulted in those valuable rainbow-colored cards not making their way into legitimately sold packs of The Pokémon Trading Card Game’s Fusion Strike expansion.

Polygon spoke to the people who were involved in the attempted sale of those rare cards to find out what happened.

The story begins in November 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic had been raging for over a year, and The Pokémon TCG was still releasing new sets of cards for an eager fanbase. New and vintage Pokémon cards alike had suddenly skyrocketed in value, thanks in no small part to fans like the rapperLogic and influencerLogan Paul buying them up for astronomical prices. When the Fusion Strike set was released just before the holidays, fans were camped outside stores all across the country for their chance to crack a few packs before stocks sold out. In some locations, the police were even brought in to handle the crowds. The fracas would ultimately lead to one big box retailer, Target, temporarily banning the sale of Pokémon cardsciting safety concerns.

A few weeks after the frenzy, a call came in toTrading Card World, a small independent retailer in Dallas, Texas. Someone had Fusion Strike cards to sell — a hell of a lot of them. There were so many rare cards,