It was the largest theft in the world of Pokemon cards too, only to end up being a failed venture for this man. His crimes were only discovered thanks to a photo posted on a closed Pokémon World Facebook group which was then reposted on the PokémonTCG subreddit.
The image showed a table full of rare and holographic cards, also known as “hits.’ The boxes and depth of stacks included implied that the seller had a lot of these rare collectibles, which makes him so lucky. Too lucky, in fact. So the suspicions come flooding in. "Saw this on a FB group," Redditor GuavaWave wrote when posting the photograph. "Allegedly, a printing company worker stole hits off the line and tried to offload them to a LGS."
Eventually, the thief tried to sell his rare wares to a Dallas-based company called Trading Card World (TCW), but the staff was suspicious and smart enough to ask for the seller’s details. The man shared that he worked for a Pokémon card printing company. TCW then contacted the Pokémon Company to confirm. Eventually, the cards were recovered and the law is running at his heels, so to speak.
We wish it ended there. However, netizens were sharp to notice that this event coincided with a popular conspiracy theory. The “hits” the man was selling came from Pokemon’s Fusion Strike cards series. When it was released, buyers noticed that it had artificially low pull rates for all the “hit” cards. The theft of the rare cards solidified the theory’s validity for some players.
Image credit: Guavawave