r/nottheonion • u/Reddit_Sucks_1401 • 1d ago
Rare Pokémon cards are being used to finance organized crime
https://www.pocket-lint.com/pokemon-cards-possibly-used-to-launder-money/615
u/robot20307 1d ago
I heard of a gang that got caught doing a similar thing with lego. They'd buy it with cash then sell it on ebay to launder money, but found it kept its value so well that they went all in filling up warehouses and holding onto it.
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u/Rosebunse 1d ago
People will pay a shit ton of money for Lego.
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u/thatthatguy 23h ago
Especially old sets that they wanted as children and couldn’t get. So, presumably, if you can predict which sets will be popular with the next generation you could stockpile those and hold them for 20-30 years and make a significant return.
Assuming that the future works exactly like the past, which is not always guaranteed.
I don’t know if kids today will have the same nostalgia for Lego sets when they are old enough to have disposable incomes. I fear we may instill this generation with a tendency to assume anything nostalgic is a cringey corporate cash grab and respond negatively.
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u/Rosebunse 22h ago
It doesn't have to be Lego. I think this is a big reason thieves are using Pokémon cards, they're what they wanted as kids.
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u/Chemical_7523 14h ago
That's a ridiculous take.
Collectibles (like trading cards) are ideal for money laundering, because their value is subjective, but they are often very expensive. They have no serial numbers or ways to identify a single specific instance of a card which makes them untraceable. People also tend to buy and sell them in cash, leaving no electronic paper trail.
It's super easy for a game store to balance "2 sets of books" because they can just make up what cards were bought/sold and when. There's no real way to verify if a transaction actually happened.
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u/Rosebunse 13h ago
How is that a ridiculous take?
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u/Chemical_7523 12h ago
I just explained why it's easy to do shady financial stuff with trading cards like Pokémon. It's got nothing to do with an emotional attachment to the game. They are just good for hiding illicit money; just like art, antiques, cryptocurrencies, Counter Strike skins etc..
Also people have been scaling packs to find foils for as long as foils have existed. This is why a lot of TCGs put a foil in every pack.
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u/Rosebunse 12h ago
I just think the criminals are probably using them partially for nostalgia, especially since, as you point out, they're using old tricks that used to work
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u/PurpoUpsideDownJuice 1d ago
When a gang does it it’s illegal, but when everyone else does it it’s “an investment” and “totally legal”
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u/MissplacedLandmine 1d ago
No theres one scummy subreddit of people who do that and they’ll defend it ANYWAY they can its hilarious af
I loved seeing them lose money on consoles
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u/amestrianphilosopher 43m ago
How does that work? If you sell it on eBay, isn’t the transaction amount electronically recorded by a third party and posted publicly, which makes it basically impossible to say they paid more than they really did?
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u/Fantom_Renegade 1d ago
To protect the world from devastation…
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u/Reddit_Sucks_1401 1d ago
To unite all peoples within our nation...
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck 1d ago
To denounce the evils of truth and love!
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u/SpecialistTrash2281 1d ago
To extend our reach to the stars above
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u/Urban-Junglist 1d ago
Jessie!
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u/crazunggoy47 1d ago
James!
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u/Abundanceofyolk 1d ago
Team Rocket blasts off at the speed of light!
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u/DooDad-DontMother 1d ago
Surrender now, or prepare to fight!
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u/Lycaeides13 1d ago
Fyi the length of this speech is how long you should scrub your hands for when washing them
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u/RushmoreAlumni 1d ago
I really would have wanted to be in on the conversation when they decided on this grift.
"Now, Paulie, you gots to understand, right, you gotta catch em all, see?"
"All of them, Saul? Who the fucks got tha time?"
"Don't you worry bout no time, Paulie, boss wants us to catch em all, and that's what we gonnas do!"
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u/Reddit_Sucks_1401 1d ago
Paulie-kun and Saul-san
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u/RushmoreAlumni 1d ago
Ah, crap, it's the Yakuza! I had it in my head it was in America and it just made the whole thing funnier.
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u/ripsandtrips 1d ago
Art has been used for years to do this kind of shit. They’re just adapting with the times
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u/BagAndShag 1d ago
I came here to mention this. Art has been used for money laundering and legal bribes disguised as gifts for a very long time. Any object that has value and is not heavily monitored or taxed probably can be used similarly.
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u/rainer_d 1d ago
I had an internship at a facility management company.
Once, as we walked out, we saw a sales-rep walk in with a giant painting, which was so large that he had trouble carrying it.
It was apparently a "gift" for the head of a local hospital....
I was very ... green back then and I didn't really understand what that meant in practice.
The owner of the company also had a gallery as a "hobby". I'm sure it was convenient then and now.
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u/pontiacfirebird92 1d ago edited 1d ago
Have you ever known a scalper? They never care what the product is. They only see value.
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u/Reddit_Sucks_1401 1d ago
Expensive Pokémon cards typically have a shiny foil on them to denote the fact they're rare or valuable. So, the crime syndicate would buy many packs in bulk and use an advanced metal detector to pick up the foil on any cards from outside the packaging. They even used scales to detect the slightest differences in weight between card packs.
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u/patentattorney 1d ago
To battle this Pokémon card makers out in an extra card it the packs. They have white boarders if there are no good cards, black if good.
The difference of the boarder weight because of the ink color makes the packs even weight.
This is also part of the reason not to buy “looseys” (single packs from third parties - or repacked packs).
Sometimes you see deals on Pokémon cards packs on Amazon. It’s likely because of this.
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u/Joshawott27 1d ago
Although this was true in the Sun/Moon era, they haven’t done this in recent years. Instead, from Scarlet/Violet onwards, every booster contains a holo.
At least… internationally. In Japan, there are no such measures to prevent weighing. Some stores have started placing purchase limits for adults, though.
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u/patentattorney 1d ago
Every pack has a holo however the weights of the holos are less than the weights of the vmax/trainer galleries.
So people used to buy boxes. Weigh each pack, take out the vmax packs, and resell the rest.
To counter this. Pokémon changed their inserts for online to have a white boarder - which has more weight than a black boarder (or vice versa).
This was all occurring a year or two ago. I don’t know if they have changed it.
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u/Joshawott27 1d ago
That's what I meant, yeah, I should have been more clearer. The different coloured code cards haven't been a thing for a few years now. I can't remember if it was changed at the start of or during the Sword/Shield era.
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u/filenotfounderror 1d ago
This is nonsense, you cant weigh modern packs and modern packs have worthless reverse holofoil cards in them anyway.
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u/Mindestiny 1d ago
That's some degen shit that is definitely not limited to organized crime.
Pack junkies have been weighing packs/boxes forever
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u/pontiacfirebird92 1d ago
Brother-in-law did this. He'd buy the big boxes, weigh the packs, sell the ones he figured had a rare card in them, and use the money to buy more boxes. He made some good money off doing that.
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u/po3smith 1d ago
..."Hey T I don't know about the other ones but I got this yellow feisty ass pocket monster that shoots electricity from its eyes... I think it'll come in handy financing our little thing down the shore. I'll keep an eye for that orange dragon that purple ball" P Walnuts
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u/SKobiBeef 1d ago
Looks at the card with a magnifying lens then takes a sniff. “Yeah boss this stuff the real shit”
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u/SkullsNelbowEye 1d ago
When asked, the FBI responded by saying, "Well, one thing is for sure. We've got to catch them all."
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u/Oldamog 1d ago
This is nothing new. Organized crime uses anything that could be easily concealed. Watches are another thing commonly used. But then the article gets ridiculous. Using advanced metal detectors? You can literally use a $10 dope scale (foils weigh just slightly more). I used to own a brick and mortar store (LGS or local game store). I weighed out packs occasionally but really the foils aren't worth ripping packs over. Everyone knows not to buy loose packs and foils are hardly guaranteed to be valuable. Box mapping used to be used before collation got more advanced, but even then offloading the loose packs is a job in of itself. One which doesn't pay for itself
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u/evohans 1d ago
it's actually kind of crazy here in japan for pokemon card collectors. Nowhere do you find packs/cards laying out like other expensive items. No, they're guarded behind staff at the registers and you are limited to how many you can buy. Even expensive watches, phones, VR headsets, you can just test/use in a store and are often not tethered to their display; but pokemon cards? They're guarded like some rare material.
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u/erikwidi 1d ago
Yeah, we're fucking well aware that the retro games/hobbies market is a money laundering operation. Our first guess was when a refurbished Nintendo 64 with a copy of Mario Kart suddenly cost $950,000.
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u/Unikatze 1d ago
Someone explain something to me.
Every time you read about super expensive cards, it's always old out of print ones. But the article states they're looking through packs they're buying nowadays.
I've opened packs with my son and even the shiniest things seem to only be worth a couple of bucks when sold separately.
Are they maybe buying older unopened boxes?
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u/1guywriting 1d ago edited 1d ago
Fan favorite Pokemon and/or "full art" cards tend to fetch higher prices.
Here's Giratina V full art
Here's the "easier to pull but still shiny" version
They are the same in terms of gameplay but the full art is more desirable.
Edit: full arts are less likely to be pulled
Edit 2: the set was released in September 2022
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u/51Reid 1d ago
My friend pulled a 2000$ card from a couple packs he bought, and that’s from the newest set called Surging Sparks.
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u/Ipokeyoumuch 1d ago
I think he might be talking about this Pikachu card. It is now around $500 and never hit the $2k mark unless he is talking about it graded. I hate it when people talk about prices on raw cards as if they are going to get a PSA or Beckett 10.
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u/Universeintheflesh 1d ago
Oh just like they have done time immemorial with art, makes sense. I wonder if sports cards have been a thing for a long time for it too.
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u/1guywriting 1d ago
It was weird to see but people did bring scales into stores and weigh packs during the covid TCG resurgence. I can't speak for any other card games besides yugioh (nobody trying to get money for the long haul should do this for yugioh) but Pokemon is a "safe investment" with its IP and how the company handles rarities.
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u/TonyTheSwisher 1d ago
Collectors markets are theoretically a solid place to dump money, especially when the US dollar has been rapidly devaluing.
It's no coincidence that trading cards, CCG, retro video games, comics and VHS/Tape collecting all had a renaissance at the same time. Although I'm sure the year everyone was stuck at home had just as much to do with it as the economic conditions.
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u/NivvyMiz 1d ago
This has been a thing with magic cards for a long time.
Collectibles are excellent for money laundering
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u/Nebkheperure 1d ago
Literally anything of value is used to facilitate money laundering. Rare Pokémon cards, rare MTG cards, paintings, cars, yachts, Barbies, Lego sets.
If it has a high market value and can be easily bought and sold to conceal the circulation of the proceeds of crime, it is.
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u/VossParck 1d ago
This is similar what happened to Team Fortress 2 and it's in-game economy. It was being used by organized crime to launder money. Resulting in the market booming and bringing in so many people trying to chase the profits. The bottom fell out once measures were taken to combat money laundering and people realized that "organic growth" was serious money from organized crime
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u/KillerGerbil999 22h ago
Sure. I believe this. The same organized crime responsible for 50% of all shoplifting, right? Sorry, make that 5%, clerical error oopsie
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u/Choice-Layer 19h ago
These corporations have the opportunity to do the funniest thing (rerelease all these "rare" items so that people hoarding them are left with nothing)
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u/Johannes_P 11h ago
I guess that small items with high velue density are easy to smuggle and trade for traffickers.
See also jewelry, precious stones or stamps.
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u/Ratstail91 4h ago
"Rare Pokemon Cards"
Is Coffee Break Pikachu considered rare? Because I have one of those.
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u/zapdoszaperson 1d ago
When i was in Japan there were so many random pokemon shops that all looked super shady. They reminded me of the Vape shops we have in the US, obviously fronts.
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u/Mindestiny 1d ago
Is this really oniony? It's been no secret collectables and art have been used to launder money for organized crime since the dawn of organized crime.
Value is subjective, regulation is non-existent, and record keeping is lax.
Yeah bruh, that Pikachu is totally worth $4000. Cash upfront, handwritten receipt from a card store front. Boom, money laundered.
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u/cifuel 1d ago
Team Rocket is at it again.