Thieves have tried to break into Taylor Minatogawa’s business five times in the last two months, distressing him so much he’s spent at least a dozen nights inside his shop keeping guard.
A hooded suspect with a baseball bat surprised one of his employees at the door of the Gardena shop during one unsuccessful attempt. In another, thieves cut their way in through the roof, making off with thousands of dollars’ worth of loot.
For all that effort, one might think the store deals in diamonds, designer brands or expensive tech. But Minatogawa doesn’t work with any of those — he deals in Pikachus, Charizards and Jigglypuffs, to name a few.
Over the last six months, trading card shop owners and serious Pokemon card collectors across Southern California have been targeted in brazen, sophisticated and sometimes violent thefts, with losses reaching into the six figures in a single heist.
Police in several cities are investigating. Some are asking neighboring departments if they’ve run into similar cases. For their part, the victims aren’t sure if they’re all being hit by the same crews or different groups targeting the pocket-sized, colorful cartoon loot, or what they and police can do to stop them.
Business owners say they’ve been followed. Held at gunpoint. Pepper sprayed. Burglars have broken into their cars, tunneled into their businesses through the walls and the roof and smashed through the front.
“Right now there’s more security needed for Pokemon cards than diamonds,” said Minatogawa, owner of Buddies Collectibles. “It’s getting crazy.”
In multiple burglaries, thieves have walked right by the cash register and straight to the display cases, smashing the glass and fleeing with handfuls of valuable cards before police arrive.
“If it was a bank and they got robbed for $200,000 it would be a big deal, but here they’re still stealing valuables that are [worth] $200,000,” Minatogawa said.
Created in 1996, Pokemon exploded in popularity with children with the introduction of a Nintendo Game Boy game, which was followed by a cartoon series and trading card game. In the card game, players compete with a set of drawn cards that represent different creatures with a range of powers and skills, attacking and defending against each other until one side is defeated.
As the game has aged, so have its fans. While children continue to collect and trade the brightly colored cards, sometimes for a favorite character, some adults have turned Pokemon card collecting into a lucrative hobby — and even a business.
Collector card shows draw hundreds of vendor tables across the country and, vendors and collectors told The Times, each table easily can generate $15,000 a day in trades, sales and purchases.
Companies like Beckett Grading Services and Professional Sports Authenticator, or PSA, which authenticate and grade the quality of collectible sports cards, now do the same with Pokemon cards.
The service is worthwhile for collectors looking to keep track of high-value cards in the market, including their rarity and value.
In 2022, PSA authenticated almost 3.4 million Pokemon cards, more than they did that year for football, basketball or baseball cards. Last year, a representative said, the company authenticated 11 million Pokemon cards — more than they did for the three major sports combined.
“Pokemon is truly in a category of its own,” said Elizabeth Gruene, general manager at PSA. “Pokemon is the only category that has sustained this type of global, year-over-year demand.”
Some cards can yield thousands of dollars apiece, luring collectors willing to stake their livelihoods on them, and thieves looking to quickly sell them for cash online, at trade shows or at card shops.
Two weeks ago outside of RWT Collective in Sawtelle, thieves robbed a collector at gunpoint as he was leaving the store, police said.
The victim had left a trading card show in Orange County that day and visited the Olympic Boulevard shop looking to barter, he told The Times. As the business was closing he headed to his car when he was targeted by two armed men.
The victim believes he might have been followed from the show. Video surveillance shows the suspects briefly walking into RWT Collective, then walking outside to wait for the victim and his cards.
The robbers made off with more than $300,000 worth of cards, the victim and the shop’s co-owner said.
The victim, who asked not to be identified for fear of impacting the investigation or being targeted again, said he’s taken precautions in the past but never expected to be the victim of armed robbery.
He’s been collecting since 2016 and quit his job to focus on it. The robbery, he said, seriously impacted his financial situation.
“It’s devastating,” he said. “There’s no way to describe it.”
News of the robbery quickly spread across a network of Southern California’s top traders and trading card shop owners, a dozen of whom spoke to the The Times. They had been monitoring burglaries and thefts for the last six months, several said, and the armed robbery was especially alarming.
“This is a serious escalation with the weapons involved, the violence involved,” said Danny Leserman, one of the RWT Collective owners. “This is obviously an issue that is growing.”
Leserman is one of the shop owners considering armed guards, a jarring decision that he said is difficult to consider because most of his clients are children who spend hours at the shop trading with others. But Pokemon cards’ growing popularity are making them more attractive to criminals.
“This industry, there’s a lot of similarities to be made to the art world,” Leserman said. “The only difference here is that it’s art that could fit in your pocket.”
In December, YouTuber Logan Paul said he paid $5.3 million for a single Pokemon card, a PSA Grade 9 Pikachu Illustrator that he said he plans to auction for a profit. The social media influencer has taken to wearing the card on a chain around his neck in videos.
Part of what helped Pokemon expand in popularity for nearly three decades has been its wide appeal among boys, girls and adults and the growing universe of game variations and characters. Over the last 20 years, Pokemon card values skyrocketed more than 3,000%, more than any other sports card collectible, according to Gruene.
“There’s also an element of nostalgia that helps drive its momentum,” she said. “What makes Pokemon unique is that it isn’t aging out of its audience but it’s expanding it, becoming a cornerstone of the modern collectibles hobby rather than a passing trend.”
The market for Pokemon cards is wide-ranging and includes online trading with overseas collectors who don’t ask a lot of questions and are willing to pay top dollar for a rare card, those in the business say.
Some shop owners are requesting photo identification when buying cards from customers, out of concern thieves may be trying to offload stolen goods, and sharing lists of what they’ve lost with other businesses so they can look out for each other.
The same day the collector was robbed outside of RWT Collective, burglars hit Simi Sportscards in Simi Valley, police said. At about 3:30 a.m., burglars broke into the shop and stole at least $10,000 worth of goods, much of it Pokemon cards, Simi Valley police Sgt. Rick Morton said.
“There’s high value in those,” he said.
In a video posted by the shop on Instagram, five suspects in hooded sweatshirts go directly to the card displays, smashing the glass and grabbing the cards. It’s the second time the shop was hit in less than a year, Morton said.
Simi Valley investigators are checking with other police departments including Los Angeles, Burbank and Glendale for any connections among their cases. Collectors and shop owners have little doubt there’s a link between some heists.
“It’s too sophisticated to be opportunist,” said Cassius Van Wees, a former financial advisor and Pokemon card collector who’s a part of the RWT Collective.
He pointed to a pre-Halloween burglary, when he’d decided to store rare, high-value cards from his personal collection at the shop so he could show them to children at a convention the next day.
That night, he said, thieves tunneled into the shop through a neighboring business and made off with about $100,000 in cards.
“They b-lined straight to my cabinet,” Van Wees said. “They knew exactly what they were doing.”
Though there have been arrests — Burbank police arrested four burglary suspects in early January — collectors and shop owners are on edge. In just the last two months, burglars collectively made off with more than $500,000 in Pokemon cards.
Among the victims was Jerry Hernandez, whose Huntington Beach store, Box Cards & Collectibles, was hit the week before Christmas when thieves tunneled in through the roof.
“It’s hard not to worry with so many other stores being hit,” Hernandez said. “I feel like once we got hit and some of the other shops got hit it created a snowball effect.”
Now, when someone he’s not familiar with comes in trying to sell an expensive card, he reaches out to other collectors and shops to check if it might be one of their stolen cards.
“I never really imagined it would get to this point,” he said. “It’s like we have to deal with it like we’re a jewelry store.”
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