In a Pokémon card store in Sydney on a Tuesday night, you’ll find something that doesn’t seem like a high-value deal right away. Pop culture t-shirts and hoodies. Under fluorescent lights, there are long white tables. The low chatter of people who are arguing about which card to play next. It has a casual, almost homey feel to it. But if you look more closely, you can see that something has changed. The cabinets have been strengthened, the cameras have been installed, and motion sensors are blinking near the ceiling.
Over the past few months, store owners in Sydney and the rest of New South Wales have been quietly improving their security. Some have even bought systems that are more common in banks or jewelry stores than hobby shops. There wasn’t a single dramatic event that set things off. There were small break-ins that got worse in the second half of last year and haven’t stopped completely since then.
The numbers are very interesting when you look at them. In Victoria alone, store owners of video games reported at least 15 break-ins in a short period of time. The total value of the stolen goods was about $500,000. Five stores in the northwest of Melbourne were broken into in just six days at the beginning of February. The shops in Sydney, which were a few hundred kilometers away, didn’t wait for the wave to come. Before it did, they began to reinforce.
Why did these stores become targets in the first place? The answer tells us a lot about how quickly the Pokémon card market changed. On the secondary market, cards that used to cost $5 are now going for $20 or more. The prices of rare competitive cards have doubled, and some are now worth more than $1,500. Some cards have been sold for millions of dollars, so collector pieces have their own economy. Thieves who work together to commit crimes often see things like that, which is valuable and locked up in a store cabinet.
Everything sped up because of social media. The videos of influencers opening booster packs and pulling out rare holographic cards got millions of views and turned Pokémon cards from a niche hobby into a well-known product. The Pokémon Company hasn’t always been able to keep up with demand, putting out new sets in small numbers that sell out almost right away. When there aren’t enough items and people can see them, prices go up, and people who aren’t interested in the game at all come to buy them.
More than just losing money, the thefts have been upsetting for store owners in other ways as well. In plain English, Jason Zhe, who runs a store in the northwest of Melbourne, said it was like being “on a life raft and seeing all the sharks swimming around you.” That picture stays with you because it shows how real it is to feel like a threat is hovering around a place where people trust each other and follow routines.
These stores aren’t just places to buy things. That part is what is often left out of news stories about break-ins. As an informal place to meet, places like The Games Cube in Parramatta, which holds regular trading card tournaments, are great. The store’s owner, Lindsey Heming, has said that it feels like a men’s shed: people come in once a week to see familiar faces and talk about their plans for the week. Some players, especially younger men who don’t have many friends, really look forward to these Tuesday or Thursday nights. It’s not just the stock that gets messed up when a store gets hit. The routine in the community is also thrown off.
Putting in bank-level security at Sydney’s Pokémon card shops is, in a way, a practical way to deal with a theft problem. It’s also a recognition that what’s inside those stores, not just the cards, but also the culture that’s built up around them, is valuable and should be protected. The sensors and cameras are brand new. The friendships that were made there, some of which go back decades, are not. It looks like store owners know more than anyone else that one is there to protect the other.
