Armed robbers steal $100,000 value of Pokéstock from New York Metropolis Pokémon retailer

Pokémon video games might not come to PC fairly often, nevertheless it’s nonetheless the highest-grossing media franchise on the planet and, subsequently, severe enterprise. Severe sufficient to drag a gun in the course of a retailer, apparently, as NBC reported taking place throughout a theft in Manhattan on January 14.

Nobody was damage, fortuitously, however the trio of robbers brandished handguns and smashed open a number of show instances filled with merchandise on the Poké Courtroom on thirteenth Avenue. They stole what retailer proprietor Courtney Chin estimates is $100,000 in merchandise. The thieves stay at giant.

Now, I do know what you are pondering. This crime, although unlucky, is form of novel and possibly even a little bit humorous as a result of a Pokémon retailer was robbed and never a financial institution or an artwork museum. That is why you are studying it on PC Gamer, in spite of everything. Sometimes, the one heists we cowl contain Payday 3 or the newest crypto nonsense⁠—who the heck steals Pokémon merch at gunpoint? However a short journey down the rabbit gap knowledgeable me that this Pokéheist is embarrassingly mundane.

Earlier this month, an analogous theft in Los Angeles involving the creature collector netted some armed thieves triple the payday of the above case. The identical weekend, one other theft befell in Simi Valley. In Dec. 2025, a distinct buying and selling card retailer in Burbank was robbed. A month earlier than that, a San Diego retailer was damaged into at night time. Reader, let me make my stance clear: you don’t, below any circumstances, gotta catch ’em all. Not like this, a minimum of.

It is easy to see why this form of factor occurs. As you might need gleaned from the six-figure labels hooked up to those crimes, uncommon and invaluable buying and selling playing cards are inclined to fetch outsized costs from collectors. That is why there’s Magic card value 1,000,000 bucks, some man simply bought $30,000 for buying and selling in a Gengar to Gamestop, and a mad lad referred to as the Kabuto King is on a journey to hoard each first version of one of many recreation’s oldest fossil Pokémon. You may suppose that does not make any of this much less silly, and my transient analysis on this matter signifies that you simply’d be proper.

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