Cards
Rash of robberies, break-ins plague hobby, card shops
It was 3:57 a.m. on a Saturday when Mike Johnson was abruptly woken up by a blaring alarm.
A security system was alerting authorities and Johnson that his trading card and video game store in the northeastern Twin Cities suburb of Forest Lake was being burglarized.
“I looked at the cameras and I see a couple of idiots running around on a free-for-all,” Johnson said. “They were filling their bags up, dropping stuff left and right.”
After smashing a window near the main door to gain entrance, two masked men ransacked Punch-Out Gaming—nabbing $36,000 in sealed boxes and graded Pokémon cards. In and out of the store in about 90 seconds, the robbers were long gone by the time police arrived at the scene.
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That same morning, July 25, Dumpster Cat Games, located in South Minneapolis, was also broken into. Punch-Out Gaming and Dumpster Cat Games are separated by just over 30 miles.
Two days earlier, Iconic Sports Cards in Hudson, Wisc., just over the border from Minnesota, had been hit. All indications point to it being robbed by the same suspects in the Punch-Out Gaming break-in.
“During a two-month span, including our store, there were about eight stores that were hit in Minnesota and western Wisconsin,” said Johnson, who owns Punch-Out Gaming with his brother, Eric.
With prices and interest in sports trading cards and TGC at an all-time high, robberies at brick-and-mortar hobby shops are becoming an epidemic across the United States.
Logically, where there is money, there is theft.
“When the craziness dies down, so will that. But until then, shops are going to be targets,” longtime law enforcement officer Larry Ross said.
MORE SHOPS HIT
Robberies haven’t been just isolated to the aforementioned Midwestern states.
On the West Coast, CardVault by Tom Brady opened a hobby store in Palo Alto, Calif. on Aug. 15. Just eight days later, suspects broke into the shop and stole 60 sports cards. The loss was estimated at $12,000. In October 2025, Brady’s CardVault in New York City was burglarized in the amount of $10,000.
In Las Vegas, robbers attempted to hit three hobby shops at the end of January this year. Collecting Dust had its front door kicked in as suspects pried glass from the frame to gain entrance, according to FOX5 in Las Vegas. Despite it being after hours, employees were in the back breaking product. The suspects got spooked and were in and out quicker than anticipated. However, they still got away with thousands of dollars in Pokémon boxes.
Just two miles north of Collecting Dust, Legacy Sports Cards had an attempted break-in but the burglars were unsuccessful.
Six miles away, robbers hit The Awesome Card Shop. Dozens of hobby boxes of sports cards were stolen with an estimated value at $50,000.
Shop owner Marcel Bilak told FOX5 he was shocked the robbers were able to get inside.
“This place is like Fort Knox,” Bilak said. “And we have so many measures in place. Extraordinary measures, actually, that most shops don’t have.”
One of the biggest robberies based on the value of product stolen happened in Twin Lakes, Wisc. On the morning of Aug. 11, a burglar broke a window and climbed into Goldenrod City Collectibles; he then opened the shop’s door for three other suspects.
The thieves got away with just over $310,000 in product. That included 2,738 single cards, 59 graded cards and 741 sealed modern items, Goldenrod City Collectibles told SCD.
“The hit was large. The money is one thing but the violating part of them entering our second home is the major thing that affected us all,” said a Goldenrod City Collectibles employee.
The four suspects were caught on surveillance video hauling several bags of items out to a white van. The robbery lasted six and a half minutes. Police arrived at the shop about 10 to 15 seconds after the suspects drove away.
“We have since upgraded all of our security, including instant police response once the alarm starts going off. In under one minute from entry, [you] need to enter a code on [a] hidden keypad, otherwise an alarm goes off and police are notified,” Goldenrod City Collectibles said. “Total security upgrade is over $50,000.”
Located 75 miles from Goldenrod City Collectibles, Bridgeport Hobby in Chicago was broken into in the early morning hours of Aug. 11.
In a post on the company’s Facebook page, Bridgeport Hobby owner Rob O’Brien announced the robbery. He said the perpetrators entered the shop through an air conditioning unit and took over $50,000 worth of cards, wax, computers and inventory. They wiped out the store’s inventory of Pokémon cards.
“We had bolted doors, shutters, alarms, cameras, all the stuff you think is supposed to protect you,” O’Brien posted. “Never in a million years did I think someone would come through the AC unit.”
PUNCH-OUT HIT TWICE
At Punch-Out Gaming, Johnson isn’t foreign to having his shop broken into.
In February 2022, robbers entered an empty building next to Punch-Out Gaming, broke through the backdoor and cut holes in the wall to get into the video and card shop. The smash-and-grab was in excess of $250,000.
Johnson took measures to try and prevent it from happening again.
“We reinforced the walls and added more security—cameras and motion sensors,” said Johnson, who didn’t think he would ever get robbed a second time.
This time around, robbers decided to shatter the window near the main door. Johnson believes one of the two suspects had cased the shop beforehand because he knew where to find what he wanted.
Along with all the Pokémon product the thieves grabbed, they came away with three boxes of sports cards.
“They didn’t get enough stuff to justify getting locked up for,” Johnson said.
Street cameras in the Twin Cities tracked the suspects’ van to a house in St. Paul. A $25 blaster box was found in the vehicle. One male was arrested and the police have fingerprints of the second assailant, but he has yet to be apprehended.
Johnson isn’t sure what happened to all the other items that were stolen.
“The police haven’t told us much,” said Johnson, who found out one of the robbers was arrested through word of mouth.
A couple days after the robbery, Johnson took additional measures to try and prevent a future break-in at his shop.
“We’ve got little cages that we close at night now over the door and windows,” Johnson said. “They’re not getting through that.”
Johnson advises other shop owners to follow suit and put locked cages over doors and windows.
“It’s a lot cheaper than getting reinforced glass. I think it’s better,” said Johnson, who said the cages cost just a “couple hundred bucks.”
POLICE TIPS
After 25 years in law enforcement and 26 years as the security director for the National Sports Collectors Convention, Ross knows all too well that if something has value, it’s inevitably going to lead to illegal activity.
Sports cards and TGC stores have positioned themselves near the top of the list of businesses that are highly susceptible to getting robbed.
“Obviously, it’s supply and demand. If something gets valuable, it’s more of a target to get stolen or have surveillance on card shops where they’re casing the joints out,” Ross said. “The other thing is the cards are so vague. You could put $50,000 worth of cards in a backpack—it’s easy to transport, it’s easy to move. It’s hard to follow, because you can crack the grades if they’ve been graded by PSA or Beckett or whatever.”
Any type of card products, raw or graded, sealed and unsealed, are extremely tough to track.
“Even the cards that are graded, because you’ve got to file police reports. It could have changed 10 times already,” said Ross, who worked for the Atlantic City Police department from 1981-2006 before retiring as a captain.
“There are shows every weekend across the country. Saying, ‘I bought it here. He bought it there. I got it there.’ If I bought it in good faith and didn’t know it was stolen, how would I know? It’s tough. Then you’re dealing with jurisdictions. Well, if the card is stolen out of, say Rosemont, the report has to be filed in Rosemont and then Rosemont Police will take the case. I think it’s a mess, it really is.”
To help keep track of their inventory, Ross suggests that shops record video documentation.
“I tell everybody when they move into a house, ‘Go room by room and film it and store the film,’” Ross said. “You can do it on your phone. You know what you have, video your inventory. It’s that simple. Once it’s done, when the new stuff comes in, you video that and it takes you 10 minutes. That’s all you have to do, keep it inventoried.”
Ross also has other ideas that can help hobby shop owners protect their merchandise. He is a big proponent of buying a large safe to store valuables when a shop isn’t open. That way, even if the business is broken into, robbers aren’t able to access the safe’s contents.
“A safe can’t be moved,” Ross said. “Unless they’re going to sit inside your building with a blowtorch, it’s hard to get into. You can’t move them; you can’t lift them. I’m a hunter and former policeman, so I’ve got my guns. But I’ve got them in a safe, because I’m worried about them. I’m worried about them, one, someone getting their hands on my guns and, two, protecting my valuables.”
Ross also stresses hobby shops need a security system. Every person that Ross talks to about alarm systems, he makes sure to explain how they work.
“Let’s say you’ve got a house alarm, you’ve got kids and you worry about it, not that you’re in a bad neighborhood, but you want to be safe. The alarm companies want you to pay that monthly residual for a place that’s going to call your local police when it goes off, that’s what it’s about,” Ross said.
“I tell everybody, ‘Don’t even get that modern line service.’ You tell them when you put your alarm system in you want three or four of the loudest alarms that are going to go off. You put them in your attic where you have your vents, so it’s loud and your neighbors will hear it. They don’t know when you break in and when that alarm goes off, they don’t know if it’s monitored or not. If that doesn’t scare them, you’ve got a problem anyway.”
Spending a few thousand dollars for peace of mind is well worth the money in the long run. It’s applying the same principles in other facets of life.
“Some of these cards are $100,000 cards. Why wouldn’t you invest $5,000 in security systems? I don’t like rolling the dice like that,” Ross said. “You buy a new car; you insure your car. Wouldn’t you want to insure your business and your livelihood?”
