It’s time to track down Team Rocket, as a true Pokémon robbery took place in two weeks in South Carolina.
According to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office, about $200,000 worth of Pokémon cards were stolen from a South Carolina home in mid-July. Christopher Polidoro of Inman, SC, reported the theft on July 13.
The Smoking Gun spoke to Polidoro, who said the stolen goods were “worth more than $500,000.” But a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office in an email disputed that figure, saying their actual value was $200,000.
The original report stated that the card was valued at “half a billion” dollars, largely an error. The case “remains an active investigation”, according to deputies.
In the report, Polidoro said that since October 2021 the only people living in the same room as the stolen card were his mother and some HVAC repairmen. In The Smoking Gun, Polidoro said the cards were stored in his 6,800-square-foot home such as baseball, football, and basketball cards, among other collectibles.
Polidoro told The Smoking Gun that he bought the cards in 2014 for $431,000. The collection is believed to have contained three closed boxes of cards, each containing 24 packs of cards. (The police report said one-and-a-half boxes were stolen.) Polydoro said that one box contained a rare Japanese version of a card.
Polidoro and Spartanburg reached out to the County Sheriff’s Office for further explanation of the stolen items.
It’s no secret that rare Pokémon cards can make a lot of money these days. Collecting the most valuable cards is a lucrative and expensive hobby, some of which have sold for up to $900,000.
Polydoro, an insurance broker, said that the cards were not insured, so he would swallow the damage if the stolen Pokémon didn’t arrive.
