The Alarming Surge in Pokemon Card Crime in Australia

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Andrew Cassar has been collecting Pokémon cards and merchandise since 2022.

He says it’s a hobby that brings him back to his childhood and helps him with his mental health.

“I remember collecting as a kid and watching the show on [Australian cartoon show] Cheez TV back in the days,” Cassar told the Feed.

“I had to grow up quite quick, had a bit of a rough childhood. So now it’s just me kind of being a child again and getting to do it with my own son and kids.”

While the Pokémon franchise has existed for nearly 30 years, interest in the trading cards has grown significantly recently — and it’s brought on a wave of crimes.

Alongside his 10-year-old son Joseph, Cassar runs an online business selling Pokémon cards and merchandise.

The value of the individual cards they sell through their eBay account varies vastly, with one card listed for $40 and another for $55,000.

In Cassar’s western Sydney home, the walls of his living room are lined with unopened Pokémon card boxes, carefully preserved in perspex display boxes.

A display shelf of collectable cards in plastic coverings

Andrew Cassar has been collecting Pokémon cards since 2022. Source: SBS

He points to a collection of four boxes — unopened Japanese-made sets displaying the Pokémon character Eevee, each worth about $2,500.

While he treasures these objects, Cassar is aware of the risks of having a collection as valuable as this in his home.

Pokémon card crimes

The meteoric rise in popularity of Pokémon cards in recent years has led to a spate of crimes in Australia.

Hands holding Pokémon cards in plastic cases

Interest in Pokémon card collecting increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: SBS

In February, Victoria Police arrested four people who were charged with burglaries at collectible cards stores and stealing cryptocurrency ATMs across Melbourne’s north-west.

Police said their investigation uncovered an “Aladdin’s cave of items, including approximately $50,000 worth of collectible trading cards”, including Pokémon cards.

Two men were charged as the primary alleged offenders in the organised crime syndicate.

In April, another hobby store in Moonee Ponds in Melbourne was burglarised for Pokémon trading cards.

The popularity and value of Pokémon cards has also led to violent crime. In April, a 38-year-old man was assaulted in Shellharbour in NSW and had a rare card stolen after arranging to sell the collectible in a carpark.

The card, which was believed to be worth more than $8,000, was retrieved, but police are continuing their investigation.

While he hasn’t had cards stolen from his home, Cassar has accidentally bought card packs that have been tampered with — packs that he suspects thieves have opened to steal valuable cards and then resealed for sale.

Cassar says instances like this are “disappointing” and could have compromised his credibility in the card collecting community if he had sold them on to customers without noticing the markers of package tampering.

David Rong, a Pokémon card collector and seller in Sydney, says it is “shocking” to hear about the rise in crimes related to the hobby.

“A lot of people are actually very disturbed by it,” he told The Feed.

A man holding two plastic packets of cards

Andrew Cassar believes he’s accidentally bought packets of Pokémon cards that have been tampered with. Source: SBS

“And the community is completely against acts like this.”

Rong runs a YouTube channel documenting conventions where he sells and trades Pokémon cards and says he tries to educate others in the community about how to spot scams online.

Rong also warns others about the dangers of private in-person trades.

“I would usually tell everyone to meet at a public location, for example, like a coffee shop or a shopping centre, where there’s people around and where there’s also cameras as well,” he says.

‘Wild’ profits from investing in cards

The crimes have been driven by an intensifying marketplace where the value of certain Pokémon cards has skyrocketed in recent years.

Pokémon first appeared on the market in 1996 as Game Boy games, which were followed by the trading card game and manga television series.

Since its launch, the Pokémon franchise has produced films and the viral mobile game Pokémon Go and, as of March, over 75 billion cards have been printed, according to the Pokémon company.

However, the recent resurgence in interest in Pokémon trading cards traces back to COVID-19 lockdowns.

A man in a dark hoodie holding a Pokemon card in a plastic case looking at a woman in an orange jacket. They are standing in an underground car park with cars parked

David Rong is a passionate collector of Pokémon cards and says the community has been ‘disturbed’ by a recent wave of crimes. Source: SBS

In 2021, Texas-based auction house Heritage Auctions reported a mint-condition card of the character Charizard had sold for over $463,000. In 2019 similar Charizard cards were listed for $24,700.

In June 2022, the same auction house sold a rare version of a Pokémon Pikachu card for $1.3 million.

Executive vice president of Heritage Auctions, Joe Maddalena, said the COVID-19 pandemic had led to members of gen X and millennials “looking for things to do and we found a lot of these guys and girls started playing Pokémon again because they grew up with it.”

While the trading cards are designed for playing a tabletop game, many people are only interested in collecting and preserving them.

Online celebrities such as YouTuber and professional wrestler Logan Paul and US DJ Steve Aoki have fuelled interest in Pokémon card trading by documenting their own obsessions with the hobby.

In 2022, Paul paid a record $8 million for a card thought to be the rarest Pokémon card in the world — a mint-condition Pikachu Illustrator card.

Ravi Sharma, a finance content creator, told The Feed he collected Pokémon cards as a child but started collecting them again seriously in 2020 after watching videos from collectors on YouTube.

Sharma said the hobby gained interest because people who had played with the cards as children were now making “real adult money” they could spend on collecting.

“When we were kids, it was like mum would buy you a $3 pack or a deck of cards. Now, I’m making an income, an adult salary, which means I can go and chase all those cards that I never could get my hands on,” he said.

While the price of Pokémon card packs varies, a standard pack of 250 assorted cards currently costs around $20.

Sharma says the demand for Pokémon cards was “wild” when he first started collecting and production couldn’t meet the rush of interest.

“During that time the prices of some of the stuff I was buying was going up by 200 or 300 per cent in a matter of months.”

While prices have levelled out slightly since the COVID-19 pandemic, Sharma says the bubble isn’t going to burst any time soon and Pokémon cards have become a serious investment for many.

“When you look at the data behind it, unless you have Pokémon come out and be able to print a couple billion cards more than what they’ve been printing so far, it’s going to be very hard to see how prices come down.”

Losing the spirit of the hobby

However, many people who have been trading Pokémon cards for years are also disheartened by the way the popularity and value of cards has changed the community’s culture.

Rong says he has seen collectors leaving the hobby entirely because others have ruined the enjoyment of Pokémon cards.

A brief case full of collectable cards in plastic containers

Some Pokémon cards can sell for millions of dollars but Pokémon card seller David Rong encourages collectors to buy cards that are within their means. Source: SBS

“When there’s not enough supply in the market but a very a high demand for Pokémon cards, you don’t have that equilibrium anymore,” he said.

“That causes an issue with prices skyrocketing and unfavourable characters come into the hobby to try and make a quick profit.”

While he has some rare and valuable cards in his own collection, Rong says he encourages newcomers to the hobby to concentrate on their passion instead of values.

“Because if you like a particular card and, let’s say it’s worth $5 and it’s very well within your budget, please just buy that.”

“Don’t think about what everyone is showing on social media — don’t think about what Logan Paul is doing.”