Pokemon TCG Rocked by Factory Theft Scandal

The Pokemon Trading Card Game community is up in arms after photos emerged of hundreds of rare Pokemon cards that were allegedly stolen by an employee of one of the game's printers. Over the past few weeks, photos have emerged of thousands of Secret Rare and Full Illustration cards from the "Fusion Strike" and "Evolving Skies" sets published in 2021. At least one set of these cards, according to the people who posted the photos, were tied to a worker at one of the printing facilities that prints Pokemon cards who then attempted to sell the cards to a Texas hobby store called Trading Card World. 

Trading Card World acknowledged the validity of the photos on a private Facebook group (a Reddit user reproduced the statement here), stating that they had contacted The Pokemon Company when they were approached to purchase the cards and that The Pokemon Company had worked with Trading Card World to retrieve the stolen product. According to Trading Card World, it was the "largest return of stolen property to date." The Pokemon Company then allegedly launched an investigation into the source of the stolen goods and asked Trading Card World to keep quiet while the investigations were under way. 

Several of the cards in the picture are selling for hundreds of dollars and seemingly have lower pull rates than other Secret Rares in their respective sets. While many openly wondered whether the thefts impacted the pull rates, the esteemed Pokemon card site PokeBeach noted that this was likely not the case. Per PokeBeach, the cards were likely stolen during the production phase, when the Secret Rare cards are printed separately than other cards in the set due to their texture and then sent over to sorting machines, which places the cards into individual booster packs. It's likely that the cards were stolen before they would have a chance to impact the actual pull rates of cards, as the machines that automatically sort the cards by rarity would have run out and needed to be restocked during the production process, although that assumes that the cards were stolen outright instead of swapped out with a different box.

"Even if the stolen cards managed to detract from the pull rates, Pokemon prints billions of cards a year," PokeBeach adds. "The theft occurred at one factory. During a print run, Pokemon produces almost 27 million cards a day. So it's unlikely the theft would have caused issues on a noticeable scale, if at all."

Despite PokeBeach's assurances (and PokeBeach's knowledge of the Pokemon Trading Card Game is second to none), the pictures still raise a lot of questions about pull rates, the production process, and whether something untoward has occurred. Given that the cards in the picture are among the most sought after (and expensive) in the Sword and Shield era of cards, many fans are now wondering whether an employee's actions created an artificial scarcity in the market. While Pokemon's investigation seemed to wrap up in 2022 and the pull rates of more recent sets seem not to disproportionately impact one card, some fans believe that The Pokemon Company must have done something to impact the pull rates, although that will likely remain total speculation.

The Pokemon Company has yet to make an official comment about the thefts, even though the pictures have now made their way across nearly every major Pokemon TCG site. ComicBook.com reached out to The Pokemon Company, but had not received a response as of press time.