Thieves rammed a pickup through a Tacoma card shop’s doors, filled the truck bed with Pokémon and Magic cards, and were gone in minutes

Thieves used a pickup truck to smash through the rear doors of a Tacoma, Washington, card shop early Monday and made off with roughly $50,000 in Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards, as reported by KOMO News. Northwest Sportscards has since hired overnight security guards, and Tacoma police said it was the second time in four months that a pickup was used to break through the shop’s rear metal doors.

Store surveillance video shows a black Dodge pickup bashing open the rear entrance shortly after 5:00 AM. Two masked thieves then ran inside with totes and cleared merchandise from the shelves and the storeroom.

“It’s scary. They came in with a lot of force, in and out in just a couple of minutes,” owner Don Knutsen told KOMO. “They came in looking for Pokémon. They ended up getting a lot of Magic as well.” Knutsen said the thieves filled the whole bed of their truck, and he believes the burglary was well rehearsed.

Sealed boxes make these cards a lot harder to track

Many of the stolen cards were in sealed boxes with no serial numbers or identifying marks, which makes them far harder to trace than graded sports cards. Knutsen said he is now keeping a close watch on the markets where stolen cards might be resold.

Trading cards have drawn more attention from thieves as their values have climbed, and Knutsen said rising prices have brought more demand and more incentive to steal them. The Pokémon Trading Card Game also has a competitive scene, where top Pokémon TCG players face off at major events.

Tacoma police have asked the public for help identifying the suspects and shared a description of the truck used in both burglaries, according to Dexerto. Police are looking for a dark 2006 or 2007 Dodge Ram 2500 or 3500 with a Mega Cab or extended cab, a broken driver’s side taillight, and damage to the rear bumper.

Crime Stoppers of Tacoma/Pierce County is offering up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest and charges. The shop is offering a separate $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

Police and Knutsen believe Monday’s burglary is connected to an attempted break-in at the store in July. Burglars also forced their way inside in August and stole thousands of dollars in sports cards.

Knutsen, who has run the shop for nearly 40 years, has added overnight guards seven nights a week and installed bollards around the building to stop vehicles from ramming through. “We already have a fantastic security system, great cameras, high-definition everything, but we need to make it tougher,” he said.

He said each theft sets the business back far more than the value of what was taken. “Every time something is stolen, we need to sell 10 times as much product just to break even to make up for the items that were stolen, and that’s hard to do,” Knutsen said.