A new report has surfaced about a string of burglaries targeted Trading Card shops in Tokyo Japan, mostly involving the Pokemon Trading Card Game.

This report comes via Japan Times, whose sources in the Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department confirmed at least five cases of burglaries targeting trading cards in Tokyo since Summer 2022, which is unheard of according to one senior investigator. One particular case involved a store in Machida, which had 60 cards worth ¥8.5 million stolen early last December.

This news comes following another massively successful year for the Pokemon Trading Card Games, which the Japan Toy Association reported as enjoying a fourth consecutive year of growth in fiscal 2021. That year saw and expansion of ¥178.2 billion, a testament to the continued popularity of trading card game collecting.

However, this has also made the cards a popular target of theft, as one investigative source put it, since they can be sold in the secondhand market for high prices after being stolen. Further complicating matters is that trading cards are difficult to track once stolen, having no unique serial numbers and being easy to transport overseas.

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