Every morning Melbourne hobby shop owner Umit Berkant wakes up filled with dread. Will this be the day another games shop gets ransacked? Or worse, will it be the day his security system alerts him that his shop has been looted again?
Today, Berkant is in the clear. His shop hasn’t been touched. But he knows it could only be a matter of time until the thieves target his shop again.
Umit Berkant in his Thomastown hobby and collector store, Blacklist Cards and Collectables.Credit: Penny Stephens
“There’s a lot of uncertainty, and we’re very, very unsettled,” he said. “It’s just become the new norm expecting it every day. It’s a bit of a shame that we’ve come to this level of just acceptance.”
Berkant runs Blacklist Cards and Collectables, a hobby shop in Thomastown that sells trading cards, figurines, model kits and other collectables. Despite being open at its brick-and-mortar location for only 10 months, the business has been ransacked by thieves twice, first in November and most recently last week.
The reason? To steal pocket-sized trading cards featuring fictional characters from the popular Japanese anime and video game franchise Pokémon, which have become a sought-after commodity by collectors willing to pay tens of thousands or even millions of dollars to get their hands on limited-edition runs.
More than a dozen collectables stores across Melbourne like Berkant’s have been ransacked by thieves in the past six months, prompting business owners to spend thousands of dollars to beef up their security to protect valuable stock. Business owners who spoke to The Age said at least seven shops had been targeted by thieves since last Monday.
Thieves are breaking into shops and glass cabinets to steal the coveted cards.Credit: Joe Armao
They estimate thieves have stolen about a million dollars in merchandise so far, including cards worth $20,000 from Berkant’s store. His business was fitted with roller doors and CCTV cameras, but that wasn’t enough to deter the group, who used a crowbar to break in.
The spate of break-ins has prompted one Camberwell shop, Hobbies Heaven, to stop selling Pokémon trading card products due to concerns for the safety and security of the store and its staff.
The modus operandi is often the same. Thieves wearing hoods and face coverings roll into the car park and break into the shop through the roller door. They break glass cabinets and displays and make off with thousands of dollars worth of cards and other collectables, leaving a trail of destruction and shattered glass behind.
CCTV footage obtained by The Age shows several hooded people dressed in activewear breaking into Ozzie Showroom in Eumemmerring through the roller door in the early hours of February 7. The group can be seen smashing several glass cabinets before filling a wheelie bin with stolen goods and dumping the spoils into the boot of two cars parked illegally in a disabled bay outside.
The store’s marketing manager, Dayna Mortimore, said police had taken three people into custody over the break-in, which had damaged the shop’s security shutters and automatic sliding doors – which had been installed just a week earlier.
It’s a small win for the chorus of concerned shop owners, who suspect the thieves are part of an organised group of criminals familiar with the card trading market looking to “score a pretty quick payday”. They believe the cards are being sold online or to overseas markets, most likely in China, where English-language Pokémon cards are in high demand.
Shops can spend years buying and trading cards to build a unique, and largely irreplaceable, collection. Authenticated, graded cards have a serial number that can be tracked, but most other stock is difficult to trace once it changes hands. So far, affected traders haven’t seen the stolen goods resurface in Australia.
Japan, the birthplace of Pokémon, has similarly been rocked by a spree of card robberies in recent years. Thieves made away with more than $70,000 in cards during a heist at a hobby shop in Osaka last September. A high-ranking member of the yakuza, Japan’s organised crime groups, was also arrested for allegedly stealing trading cards near Tokyo in April.
The vending machine dispensing Pokémon cards at Southern Cross Station.Credit: Justin McManus
“They definitely know what they are doing, and they are more professional than anything,” Berkant said.
Victoria Police confirmed they are probing the spate of burglaries but could not provide any more information when contacted by The Age as the investigation is ongoing.
Pokémon cards exploded in popularity during COVID-19 lockdowns, largely off the back of online groups and influencers. They have become such a sought-after commodity that some people have poured thousands of dollars into collections as a financial investment. In Melbourne, a vending machine dispensing sealed packets of cards has been installed at Southern Cross Station.
Pokémon fever has also swept through primary schools across Victoria, where children are once again collecting and trading cards. Adults are reconnecting with the characters of the original Nintendo game of their childhood, which was originally played in schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s before slowly disappearing from the mainstream to become a niche collector item.
A rare card featuring Pikachu, a yellow electric rodent-like creature and the loyal companion of protagonist Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum in the original cartoon series, is described as “the holy grail” of cards and is advertised online on marketplace eBay for an eye-watering $6.3 million.
American YouTuber and professional wrestler Logan Paul paid $8.3 million for a version of the card, which depicts Pikachu as an illustrator, in 2022, setting a world record for the most expensive Pokémon trading card sold in a private sale.
“An absurd amount of $$ for cardboard, but let me explain: the Pikachu Illustrator is the rarest Pokémon card in the world. Only 39 of them exist, and this is the ONLY PSA 10 (perfect condition),” Paul wrote on X at the time.
Ryan Street in his Parkmore store, General Games.Credit: Joe Armao
The card, which Paul reportedly bought from a secretive seller in Dubai after five months of negotiations, came encased in a $127,000 custom diamond pendant.
“This is the pinnacle of Pokémon,” he wrote.
How valuable a card is depends on what condition it is in, the year it was printed, and what Pokémon is depicted in it. Because there are only so many cards in existence and earlier editions will not be reprinted, older cards circulated in the 1990s, like Paul’s Pikachu card, hold a higher value.
Ryan Street, the owner of chain store General Games, is among those spending thousands of dollars to install metal bars and other security features at the shops he owns across metropolitan Melbourne. He believes it’s only a matter of time until one of his four stores gets targeted.
Pokémon cards in good condition can sell for thousands of dollars. Credit: Joe Armao
“Store owners are basically waking up each morning going, ‘is it my turn to be hit? What’s the damage? How much stock am I going to be losing?’” Street said.
“Some of these cards are worth thousands and thousands of dollars. Stores are losing tens of thousands of dollars per hit, not to mention that they are getting trashed in the process.”
Street, who is in regular communication with other business owners in the collectables market, said some shops were considering rolling down the shutters for good, leaving a void for fans. Many of the hobby shops being targeted offer play dates, trade shows, tournaments and authentication services.
“When these stores go away, it really removes that avenue for, lack of a better word, nerds to kind of nerd out and find other like-minded people,” he said. “Because these stores won’t be able to sustain these kinds of losses.”
For Berkant, one more hit might be all it takes.
“This is a small business at the end of the day. This isn’t a big guy or a Kmart that when they take this kind of hit they can survive,” Berkant said.
“You’re putting us in a spot where, one more hit to us and all of a sudden, we might cease to exist.”
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.