Pokémon card thieves strike. Can police catch them all?

Stella Canino-Quiñones

The burglars burst through the back door and hurried behind the sales counter, ignoring the register atop the glass cases. Surveillance video shows they were here for the goods, not the cash.

Within minutes inside the Maryland store last month, they bagged and carried away a $1 000 Jackie Robinson baseball card, a $1 200 Baltimore Orioles Brooks Robinson rookie card, and 500 Pokémon cards, some in protective cases, others in unopened boxes. The owner of Pops Sports Cards & Gaming in Essex estimates the cartoon trading cards featuring characters with names like Pikachu, Charizard and Eevee were worth at least $4 000.

Pokémon is a fast-growing segment of the multibillion-dollar trading card business, with the rarest finds valued at tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. One sold for more than $5 million. That lottery-ticket temptation has proved attractive to thieves around the region in recent months.

In Reisterstown, Maryland, a man distracted the sales clerk while three others grabbed Pokémon boxes and walked out. Unopened, the loss to the store was about $1 700. But a single rare find inside could boost the value by leaps and bounds.

Two men who signed up for a card game in Eldersburg, Maryland, sneaked into an office and stole three binders of Pokémon cards worth an estimated $25 000.

And in Fairfax, a 36-year-old named Mohammad Asif is accused of setting up the robbery of a man’s girlfriend this summer as a distraction to lure the man away from home. Then, authorities say, Asif broke into empty Fair Oaks residence to steal a $50 000 Pokémon card collection.

In previous decades, the idea of card shops getting their windows smashed or collectors being robbed after conventions was almost unheard of, said Matt Quinn, vice president of CGC Cards, a gaming and sports card grader and certifier company. But, now with the high reward for stealing these cards, incidents like these have started to appear all over the country, he said.

“Any time you’re carrying around collectibles that are worth money, whether it be gold bars, Pokémon cards, coins, toy trains, or whatever it might be, you have to be vigilant with knowing that you’re carrying collectibles that can be easily stolen from you,” he said.

The trading card industry is valued at $7.8 billion worldwide, with a projected growth to $11.8 billion in the next five years, according to a May 2025 Research and Markets report.

Pokémon, specifically, saw a surge in popularity during the covid-19 pandemic as families and children played the game together, longtime fans - now with disposable income - returned to the hobby to collect and social media influencers like Logan Paul created content about the items, said Certified Trading Card Association CEO Nick Jarman, the inaugural trade association for the industry.

Pokémon is a global entertainment franchise that began as a video game series in Japan in the 1990s and quickly expanded into movies, toys, TV shows and trading cards. The premise of the game is that a player can collect these small fictional creatures that they can capture, train and then battle with friends or strangers to win the game. Due to its cross-generational appeal, Pokémon has become one of the highest grossing media franchises in the world with $12 billion in revenue in 2024.

The cards can be valued in two ways: market demand or third-party authentication. They’re graded on a scale of 1 to 10, based on factors such as rarity, manufacturing condition and whether they show any signs of damage, Quinn said.

That grade can be the difference between a $100 card or a $10 000 card.

For Thomas Van Blargan, the owner of Pops Sports Cards & Gaming in Baltimore County, selling and buying cards formed a big part of his life. When he was 9 years old and suffering from a speech impediment, collecting cards helped him read better at school and speak better. Back then, the cards featured baseball players and sometimes came with a piece of gum in the pack.

When he got married, selling his collection of cards helped form the down payment on his home.

After the burglary, his store is at risk of going under three weeks after reopening.

Two suspects have been arrested in the burglary of his store, according to Baltimore County Police Department spokesperson Trae Corbin. Detectives in the case were unavailable to comment because the investigation is ongoing.

“I’ve had some bad luck,” Van Blargan said. “It’s hard to keep a business going, especially a small business with prices of everything.”

While a lifelong love of sports lured him into the business, the baseball and football stars aren’t the main attraction for many of customers. They’re drawn to the packs of 2.5-by-3.5-inch cardboard depicting animated creatures. And whenever he puts a coveted single Pokémon card in the glass case, it’s gone by the end of the week.