When Ron Zeida woke up in the middle of the night to a barrage of texts, he knew something was wrong.
On Dec. 1, a burglar broke into his Vanguard Comics store in Barnstable and swiped roughly $1,000 worth of merchandise from the shelves. In under a minute, the thief left the store’s glass door shattered and its tight-knit community shaken. Two weeks later, police are still combing for leads, Zeida said.
But given the range of merchandise that Vanguard carries, it could have been much worse.
“We have very high-end Pokémon inventory, high-end Magic [The Gathering] stuff,” Zeida said. “I think that’s partially why we were targeted.”
What’s so “high-end” about a couple of Pokémon trading cards? The fact that the right one can retail for several tens of thousands of dollars.
Retailers say that, just as interest in Pokémon and similar trading card games has skyrocketed since the pandemic, so too has the value of certain rare and unique cards. And the soaring sticker prices have not escaped the attention of would-be thieves.
Vanguard is just the latest collectibles shop targeted. On Thanksgiving, a comic book store in nearby Mashpee lost nearly $40,000 worth of trading cards, after a thief broke into the store by shooting out a side glass door with a BB gun. Earlier in November, twin heists at stores in Seymour and Waterford, Conn., netted thieves up to $18,000. The month before, a man walked out of a Worcester manga shop carrying a binder packed with hundreds of cards.
Across the country, comic book stores have been targeted by thieves for their high-value merchandise. One group of burglars, still at large, is thought to be potentially responsible for “half a dozen” robberies in Southern California, according to KTLA 5, including a hit on a Burbank shop on Dec. 2 that netted $100,000 worth of cards.
Those numbers, staggering as they are, are no surprise to any retailer or collector dealing in Pokémon, the Japanese media franchise that has surged in popularity in recent years. According to one report, the property grossed $12 billion in worldwide sales in 2024 — significantly more than industry peers such as Mattel and LEGO.
It’s not just kids that are driving the resurgence, according to data scientist Eric Louderback.
“A lot of kids grew up in the ’90s like I did,” said Louderback, who runs Collectiwiz, a Brookline-based online trading card platform. “We get to be in our 30s, we get some disposable income. So then it’s this nostalgia factor of, ‘Oh, it’d be great if I could reacquire a Charizard or another card that I had as a kid.’ ”
The range of Pokémon media spans TV shows and video games, but it’s the franchise’s trademark trading card game that has collectors — and thieves — seeing dollar signs. Certain cards are valued not just for their “legendary” in-game powers, but for their rarity; someone with a first edition Charizard, produced in 1999, may be looking at a windfall well north of $100,000.
A few are up there with the most coveted of sports cards. Influencer Logan Paul bought a 1998 Pikachu card for $5.275 million in 2021 (infamously wearing it around his neck at a Wrestlemania event).
“The idea that there are collectible items that are highly valued and can be resold, most likely on the internet, is not a surprise to me,” said Ryan Kearney, a spokesperson for the New England Organized Retail Crime Alliance, an association of retailers and law enforcement professionals.
It’s unclear if the burglaries in New England are connected. Both the FBI and Massachusetts State Police referred the Globe to local law enforcement for comment. Local police declined to share reports for the most recent thefts in Mashpee and Barnstable, citing the ongoing investigations.
“It’s a little difficult to say secondhand if these are individuals or organized groups of individuals,” said Eric Piza, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University. “[But] it would seem highly unlikely to me that someone would break into a card store, steal all of these collectible cards, and then not have a pretty good idea of where to go to to sell those for a profit.”
The rash of thefts has left some store owners, including Tommy Amaya, on edge.
“Right now, it’s been insane,” said Amaya, who runs Amaya Bros Comics in Cambridge. “Especially because it’s so close to home.”
Amaya said his store carries all sorts of high-value merchandise, and not just Pokémon; games such as Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! also feature trading cards that regularly sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
Even though the store has an alarm system and security cameras, Amaya said he’s considering investing in additional security.
“People know there’s a lot of value in this hobby,” he said.
In some cases, the eye-popping prices can work in law enforcement’s favor. In July, police arrested a New Bedford man for the theft of $110,000 worth of merchandise from a local card shop three weeks earlier. The man was identified by a comic book store owner in Manchester, N.H., who had recognized the rare box of Pokémon cards the would-be seller was trying to fence.
Most high-end cards are professionally graded by appraisers, which can make them easy to identify for thieves, Amaya said. But they generally lack serial numbers or other identifying characteristics that would signal to collectors that a card had been stolen.
And there’s nothing to stop a thief from removing a graded card from its plastic slab and sending it to be reappraised. In that case, Amaya said, “no one would ever know it was the card that was stolen.”
Comic book stores tend to be small, independent businesses; according to a study by industry organization ComicsPRO, 88 percent of retailers work in their stores full time. For those shops, high-end thefts can be especially disastrous.
“Some of these businesses that are being victimized are mid- to lower-size operations,” Kearney said. “The owner of the business is wearing multiple hats. You know, they have to be the HR person, they need to be the payroll person.”
Even break-ins that don’t end up netting premium items can shatter the impression of comic book stores as safe spaces for fans and players.
“Honestly, we’ve got a really great community in our store,” said Zeida, of Vanguard Comics in Barnstable. “Some of our customers, particular customers that we trust, we let stay here [after employees leave] and continue their games, and they lock up for us. . . . It’s an awesome place.”
Louderback, who owns Collectiwiz, said it’s a difficult balancing act for comic book stores to step up security measures and preserve their inclusive, close-knit atmosphere.
“People are tired of staring at their their computers and phones, and really want to have interaction,” he said, adding that, at comic book stores, fans can “come and play with each other, compete for prizes, and get that face-to-face interaction that’s missing a lot in in our super-digital world.”
But the illusion of safety can be shattered quickly when burglars strike.
“My daughter felt like, ‘Hey, this is home, and someone broke into our house, pretty much,’ ” Zeida said. “We spend more time here than we do at home.”
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports.