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Police have arrested and charged two people after a string of break-ins at multiple Calgary collectible stores, with over $80,000 worth of high-value trading cards stolen.<\/p>\n
The break-ins happened on four occasions between July and September of last year, according to police.<\/p>\n
Police said the suspects used pry bars and power tools to force their way into stores in the early hours, then escaped in stolen vehicles.<\/p>\n
“The big thing to understand in all of this is that it’s not just a simple petty property crime … there are victims. And these victims are typically families that are trying to put food on their table,” said Calgary police Const. Garret Dawson.<\/p>\n
“One of the stores, in particular, this brought on so much anxiety that the shop owners were sleeping at the shop to try to protect their assets.”<\/p>\n
Dawson said the thefts included collectibles like Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering cards, which have soared in value in recent years.<\/p>\n
Police said investigators spent several months canvassing the communities where the crimes occurred and collected hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, analyzing the similarities between the robberies.<\/p>\n
Officers were able to retrieve many of the stolen cards, as well as locate the stolen vehicles used in the crimes, a news release said.<\/p>\n
Dawson added that police still have a third suspect they are trying to identify.<\/p>\n
A 48-year-old man is charged with one count of mischief to property under $5,000, three counts of disguise with intent, two counts of breaking and entering, and two counts of possession of stolen property.<\/p>\n
A 63-year-old man is charged with one count of mischief to property under $5,000 and one count of disguise with intent.<\/p>\n
Both Calgary men are scheduled to appear in court in June.<\/p>\n
Calgary southeast stores hit<\/p>\n
Eastridge Sports Cards and Games was the hardest hit location, where more than $72,000 worth of trading cards were stolen in a single break-in on Aug. 11, 2025. Police said three people used power tools to break into the store.<\/p>\n
Others targets in southeast Calgary included: <\/p>\n
First Player, where police said three people pried open the door to a warehouse in a strip mall and once inside broke into the store, stealing more than $10,600 worth of trading cards.Celly Sports and Games, where two people stole more than $5,000 worth of collectible cards and caused approximately $2,000 in damage.Olympic Sports Cards and Games, where three people attempted to break into the store by sawing through a door. Police said they did not gain entry but did cause significant damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,48],"class_list":["post-696279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-ca","tag-calgary","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}