A man that lives in a city called Kampen, Overijssel in the Netherlands was robbed in his own house yesterday afternoon during an appointment about the sale of Pokémon cards. Two potential buyers suddenly locked the man in a closet and ran off with his cards.
The incident took place yesterday on December 16, 2020 around 15:00 CET. The victim had made an appointment with someone to sell off his Pokémon cards. The two “buyers” stood at the door and were let in by the unsuspecting owner of the cards. A conversation started inside and the victim showed his cards.
Multiple PSA graded cards including many PSA 9/10 Base Set Unlimited cards, Skyridge cards and Charizard cards have been missing now. This value of this collection is worth many thousands of dollars on the market. A PSA 10 copy of Base Set Unlimited Blastoise Holo, that is also present in this collection, has for example sold for $4250 on PWCC Auctions this month. Also the victim told a Base Set Booster box has been stolen too in the Facebook post.
You can see the stolen cards here in this Facebook post of the victim.
The police is currently in an trace investigation around the area. As of now the cards are still missing, as well as the perpetrators. The police has published a police description of the two persons on their website. According to the description, both perpetrators are around the age of 30. For full details of the description, please visit this page of the Netherlands Police. The area around the house was cordoned off with ribbons.
Considering PSA graded cards are very easy to crack out of it’s PSA case, the victim may never see his cards again and could likely been sold off (or is about to be) in ungraded condition, or be re-graded again at PSA.
(i copy pasted stuff from my article in this topic to save time, i hope you dont mind lol)
An expensive and dangerous lesson to never sell valueble items at your own house with unknown people. it was a naive thing to sell something like that at your own home.
This is a good reminder of what this hobby has become, the recent attention is very positive, but also wakes up bad people too.
It’s terrible that this has happened. Fortunately though things like this can be easily avoided.
For anyone selling cards of high value to unknown buyers:
Never use your home address - even if this guy does get his cards back the thieves will now know that the guy who lives at that address has an interest in high-value cards and likely has some kept at home;
Always bring a friend along - there’s security in numbers and it would have been harder to overpower two people instead of just one, this does depend on how armed the thieves were, however - a better option would be to have an ongoing phone conversation with somebody who is not at the same location who can overhear if anything goes wrong and immediately get the police involved;
Don’t bring unrelated cards to the trade - if you do end up a victim of a burglary during a trade it’s much better for only the items you were trying to trade to be stolen and not a load of other unrelated cards;
Use a camera hooked up to a stream feed - if someone seriously wants to trade with you they will be happy to be filmed doing so, just make sure your camera is recording as a stream to another device - in the event the other party tries to steal your camera the footage then wouldn’t be lost (just make sure to get their permission before sharing the video to your social media followers - not everyone wants their face to be publicly revealed, and that itself is not a red flag). This is only a deterrent, not every thief is camera shy.
If for some reason you are unable to do all of the above you should use a reputable middleman or sell your items off using a trustable consignment service.
It would be useful if we had a public list of the psa certs that were stolen, cause unless they are cracked and resubmitted, they will eventually end up on eBay.
The few times I’ve sold things on Craigslist I’ve always made the local supermarket parking lot the meetup spot though these guys could have very well robbed him in broad daylight too.
Yep. I actually met at the local highway patrol headquarters last time. CWP is also a good option if you are in one of the 40 states or so In the USA that allow/protect you with it lol.
So sad to hear something like this. I’m sure the seller was a nice guy. (obviously willing to let strangers in his own home). Sad thing is, money changes people. Even out of the good intentions and joy of the hobby people will still be shitty given the chance. Sad as it is please let this be a lesson to us all. Never assume and protect yourself and your family!
So sorry this happened. I always meet at a public place and even then it can be sketchy walking back to your car afterward, I’ll use PichuFan’s suggestion about the live camera.
