Thieves target memorabilia stores as price of trading cards soars

Thieves are targeting stores as the price of trading cards and memorabilia soars.

As the price of trading cards and memorabilia soars, thieves are targeting stores that sell these items.

Topdeck Hero in Laval, north of Montreal, sells everything from Pokemon cards, Magic cards and sports cards.

“The overall collectible card market has exploded since COVID. So we’re looking at like a sealed box of cards can be worth upwards of $500,” explains President Mathieu St-Jean. “If you’re looking at cards that have been in boxes, that have been kept in storage for a while, they can be even worth upward of $1,000, if not up to $10,000.”

He says the store has been burglarized at least four times in the last five weeks.

“We kind of don’t even know what to do anymore,” he said. “We’ve invested in safes, security systems. We even have an employee [who] went to the point of even sleeping there for a while.”

Store manager Olivier Drolet adds that he was off duty when the first couple of incidents happened.

He says that the suspects broke in through the front door the first time.

Other times, they broke windows using bricks.

Drolet says he spent two weeks sleeping on an air mattress on the store floor while waiting for his upgraded security.

During that time, he says there was a break-in.

Before he could get to the door, he says a new alarm scared the suspects away.

St-Jean notes the store has had more than $30,000 worth of inventory stolen during the last four incidents, in addition to $25,000 that Drolet says they’ve lost to fraud.

Steven Shelton, who owns KSKS Sports Collectibles and specializes in signed items, agrees that fraud has become a big issue.

He explains that the Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) is the industry standard for memorabilia authentication and grading.

“Over 50 per cent of these autographed pieces that go to PSA are actually bad,” Shelton tells CTV News. “We buy big collections once in a while; there are pieces that are not good, and these pieces, we just basically throw them away and take the loss.”

The owners of Topdeck Hero say a police investigation into the robberies is underway.