{"id":535536,"date":"2026-04-17T07:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/535536\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T07:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:04:07","slug":"pokemon-cards-rising-values-spark-smash-and-grab-crime-spree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/535536\/","title":{"rendered":"Pok\u00e9mon cards: Rising values spark smash and grab crime spree"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent auction by specialist auction house Stanley Gibbons Baldwins saw over \u00a31.5m in “Pok\u00e9mon assets” change hands.<\/p>\n

While most cards are not worth thousands of pounds, high-profile sales of the rarest items have driven both collector and investor interest.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the YouTuber, wrestler and boxer Logan Paul auctioned an ultra-rare, high-quality Pikachu card for a record-shattering $16.5m (\u00a312m)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, as the value grows so does the cards’ appeal to criminals.<\/p>\n

“Some of these thieves, they don’t know what they’re taking,” said Roy Raftery, trading card expert at Stanley Gibbons Baldwins.<\/p>\n

He has personally brokered Pok\u00e9mon sales worth over \u00a32m, including an \u00a384,000 Pok\u00e9mon Trainer, a \u00a3442,800 Charizard and an \u00a3832,000 Pikachu Illustrator. <\/p>\n

He said: “Thieves know Pok\u00e9mon is lucrative, they just know Pok\u00e9mon is worth taking now. And they think it’s an easier target than robbing a bank or robbing a jewellery shop.”<\/p>\n

Just this week, Wiltshire Police said a shop in Trowbridge had been burgled “during which a substantial amount of Pok\u00e9mon cards and other items were stolen”.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Chris Grundy has had first-hand experience of this.<\/p>\n

The owner of Celestial Collectables in Warrington said: “They pulled up outside the shop in a transit van, they moved the cameras up with brushes and knocked the glass panel through.<\/p>\n

“Then in pretty much four minutes they ransacked the whole shop.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent auction by specialist auction house Stanley Gibbons Baldwins saw over \u00a31.5m in “Pok\u00e9mon assets” change hands.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-535536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}