It has become a familiar scene, masked individuals breaking glass cases and grabbing boxes of Pokémon products off the shelves.
“They knew what they were doing. They knew where they were coming and what they were going after,” said Brandon Chreptyk, owner of the game store House of Cards in Abbotsford.
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Chreptyk’s shop was the latest target in the pattern of Pokémon card thefts around the Lower Mainland.
“It looked like a bomb went off in here. There was so much glass. It is just, yeah, it makes you feel really sick, because it’s something you built for all these years,” he added.
It happened on Friday around 2:30 a.m.
The group of thieves entered the shop by breaking through the window.
The owner says they were in and out in just two minutes, taking with them around $30,000 worth of products.
“They went after sealed products and stuff, so like the booster boxes and bundles and stuff like that. I don’t necessarily think these guys are big Pokémon collectors; they just know that they can quickly move this stuff, and unfortunately, our stores like ours are the victims,” Chreptyk said.
Just one day prior, Zephyr Epic, another trading card shop in Surrey, was also broken into.
The two stores believe it was the same group of perpetrators.
“Definitely the same people, same vehicle, same MO (Modus operandi), same hooking the bars, pulling the windows off. Same profiles of people in the store,” Chreptyk explained.
Unopened Pokémon cards are hard to trace and can be traded at card shows or sold online for a much higher price, making them a lucrative target for thieves.
“Other stores in the Lower Mainland are definitely on the chopping block, it seems like, and these people are targeting them, and they are fast and efficient, and they are brazen,” Chreptyk added.
Abbotsford police say no arrests have been made at this time, but they are aware of the other similar incidents, and officers will be examining those files to see if the suspects and the vehicles may be connected.
