Thieves goal Twin Cities gaming shops as Pokémon values soar – Twin Cities

Driven by surging resale values, masked thieves have been breaking into gaming shops throughout the Twin Cities this summer time and stealing hundreds of {dollars} in Pokémon playing cards.

Among the current victims: Punch-Out Gaming in Forest Lake, Iconic Sports Cards in Hudson, Wis., DUCK! and Triple Diamond Sports Cards & Collectibles in Eagan, Dumpster Cat Gaming in Minneapolis and Khang TCG Collectibles in Osseo.

The two masked burglars who smashed the window of Punch-Out Gaming with a brick on July 25 and stole Pokémon playing cards valued at $36,000 are believed to be the identical two males who hit Iconic Sports Cards in Hudson on July 23, mentioned Hudson Police Chief Geoff Willems. One of the suspects has been recognized; police are working to determine the opposite, he mentioned.

The males are wished for six current Pokémon-related burglaries across the metro, and a number of warrants are out on the recognized suspect, he mentioned.

Market rising

Since the pandemic, the marketplace for Pokémon playing cards has exploded, mentioned Eric Johnson, 44, co-owner of Punch-Out Gaming in Forest Lake. “We all started breaking into our old childhood stuff,” he mentioned. “We had nothing else to do.”

Individual uncommon or classic graded Pokémon playing cards can promote for hundreds of {dollars}, turning the buying and selling playing cards into high-value targets, Johnson mentioned. He and his similar twin brother, Mike, have owned Punch-Out since 2014.

“All my friends were investing in Bitcoin and crypto and all that stuff, and I said, ‘You need to pull out and put it into Pokémon,’” he mentioned. “There are investment companies like Fidelity that are investing into Pokémon now. … It’s worth more than the dollar. It goes up in value every single day.”

The worth of Pokémon playing cards has risen by greater than 145 p.c over the previous yr, according to data provided to CNN from trading card analytics website Card Ladder.

“It’s a big market,” mentioned Jeff Blackstad, supervisor of Dumpster Cat Games in Minneapolis, which was hit by masked burglars on July 26. “A lot of people are into it, and I do believe it will just continue to go up.”

The burglars smashed open the again door of Dumpster Cat Games round 3 a.m. and stole between $3,000 and $4,000 value of Pokémon sealed units and Magic: The Gathering sealed units, Blackstad mentioned.

“They destroyed the back door,” he mentioned. “It definitely was slammed in. It looked like they used a sledgehammer or something. They pried our lock off the door and then just kept hitting the deadbolt until it snapped off.”

It was the fourth time the shop has been damaged into because it opened 5 years in the past, Blackstad mentioned.

The thieves didn’t get extra as a result of retailer workers have been eradicating high-value playing cards from the shop at evening, he mentioned. “We’re taking more precautions and putting more safety measures in place as we go. It’s just a part of the business, unfortunately.”

In Eagan, cops responded to DUCK!, a claw-machine arcade, about 9 a.m. June 27 on a housebreaking report.  The enterprise on Diffley Road close to Lexington Avenue was damaged into round 3:45 a.m. that day, retailer officers mentioned. The suspect or suspects entered the enterprise by breaking a window with a rock and stole about $28,000 value of Pokémon playing cards, mentioned Deputy Chief Bryan Johnson.

Almost three weeks later, on July 16, 2026, at roughly 3:30 am, Eagan cops responded to an alarm at Triple Diamond Sports, situated at 2147 Cliff Road. The suspect or suspects gained entry by breaking a window with a brick and stole Pokémon playing cards; the worth is unknown at the moment, Johnson mentioned.

The Eagan Police Department has not made any arrests in reference to both incident, and the investigation is ongoing, he mentioned.

‘A broken-glass mess’

Pokémon playing cards, like something collectible, “hold a lot of value,” Blackstad mentioned. “There’s different rarities. Some of them have value based on nostalgia, some of them have value based off of ‘Can you play it in a tournament, and is it really good?’”

Some, like a uncommon 20-year-old Charizard card, might promote for as a lot as $3,500 ungraded or for greater than $90,000 graded; a Charizard is a well-liked orange dragon-like Pokémon character that has wings which are teal beneath and a fire-tipped tail.

The two masked males who broke into Iconic Sports Cards in Hudson gained entry by smashing a small window beside the shop’s door and climbing via, mentioned Shane Brown, an worker of the shop, which opened two years in the past.

They then smashed the shop’s glass show circumstances and “basically just scooped everything into garbage bags,” he mentioned. “It was a broken-glass mess.”

The males took a mix of sealed containers that retail anyplace from $175 to $200, and anyplace from 5 to fifteen single high-value Pokémon playing cards, together with a “very old Charizard that was worth around $900 to $1,000,” he mentioned.

Since the break in, the shop’s workers have been meticulous about ensuring the shop’s higher-end stuff will get put away into the secure at shut, he mentioned.

Iconic Sports Cards initially bought solely sports activities playing cards, however rapidly expanded into Pokémon, he mentioned. “Everybody who would come in was asking for Pokémon, so we slowly started increasing the amount of Pokémon that we bought,” he mentioned. “Now, it’s definitely our biggest seller.”

Social media influencer Logan Paul bought the world’s most costly Pokémon card at an public sale in February for a file $16,492,000, in response to Guinness World Records.

Paul bought the cardboard — a “PSA Gem Mint 10 graded Pikachu Illustrator” card — for $5,275,000 in 2021, Guinness World Records mentioned.

“Following this sale, it now becomes the overall most expensive trading card sold at auction (as of February 2026),” according to Guinness World Records. “Pikachu Illustrator is extremely popular with collectors due to it being designed by Atsuko Nishida (Japan), who is credited as the original creator of Pikachu. It was never originally sold and was only released as a prize in a 1998 illustration contest.”

“If you do it properly, you can get a higher return than any stock market investment with certain Pokémon cards and sports cards as well,” Brown mentioned. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with baseball at all, but Shohei Ohtani, he just had a card sell for $11 million a couple days ago.”

‘High liquidity’

Thieves goal the cardboard Pokémon playing cards, partly, due to their compact nature, Nick Jarman, CEO of the Certified Trading Card Association, told CNN in April.

“The robbers can take a handful of cards, which can represent thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, and literally fit it right in their pocket,” Jarman mentioned. “The resale is extremely fast. It’s high liquidity.”

The stolen playing cards are practically inconceivable to hint as a result of they haven’t any serial numbers, mentioned Johnson, the proprietor of Punch-Out Gaming in Forest Lake.

The July break-in was the second main break-in on the retailer, situated at 828 Lake St. S. In 2022, masked intruders, hoping to evade the shop’s 16 safety cameras and quite a few movement detectors, broke into the vacant store subsequent door after which smashed two massive holes via the adjoining wall to achieve entry to the storage rooms and steal greater than $250,000 of Pokémon playing cards.

The males who broke in in July didn’t appear as organized, he mentioned.

“One idiot ran to the right where our party room was. There’s nothing that way,” he mentioned. “The other one ran to the left, and the other one followed him, and they ran towards a little TV. There’s nothing over there either. Then they ran over towards the Pokémon stuff and went a little crazy. They left so many high-value items, like, they were just randomly grabbing things.”

They left in a gold-colored minivan that was lacking three hubcaps, he mentioned.

Johnson mentioned a part of the attraction of Pokémon is that clients by no means know once they would possibly discover a priceless card or playing cards in a field. It’s like enjoying the lottery, he mentioned.

The Johnsons as soon as had a younger buyer “pull” a “God Pack,” a uncommon booster pack the place each single card inside is a high-rarity hit, on the retailer. “I was like, ‘No way,’” he mentioned. “I was like, ‘Do you realize what this is worth?’ And he and his mom were like, ‘No, not at all.’ I was like, ‘Here, this card’s $500, this one’s $800.’ It ended up being worth $4,000. Isn’t that crazy?”

The return on funding might be enormous, he mentioned.

“Say I buy a booster box for $200, and I open all the packs and I find a $300 card in there,” he mentioned. “Well, I send it off to get graded. When it comes back from grading, now it’s worth like $1,500, so, yeah, it can be worth it.”

Johnson mentioned he doesn’t see the worth happening anytime quickly. “All the pro athletes, all these famous people, the Fortune 500 companies, they’re all getting into it,” he mentioned.

Interest is very excessive now as a result of the Pokémon Trading Card Game celebrates its thirtieth anniversary on Sept. 16, he mentioned.

No one had been arrested in reference to the Forest Lake theft as of Wednesday afternoon, mentioned Det. Sean Lafferty, of the Forest Lake Police Department.