STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. – Jonathan Gappy loves Pokémon cards.
“Pokémon was like our first love,” Gappy said on Wednesday inside his store, First Edition Finds. “We grew attached to a lot of these characters, so I think that stuck with a lot of us and still does to this day, even 30-some plus years later.”
When Gappy opened the store a couple of months ago, he pictured it being a space where kids of all ages could buy, trade, and pull cards. However, that changed just after midnight on Wednesday, July 30.
Gappy got an alert on his phone that the window to his business had been smashed open.
The surveillance video soon followed, showing a man carrying a shopping bag smashing his way through multiple display cases and grabbing dozens of Pokémon cards, most of them being from Gappy’s personal collection, and selectively grabbing sets of cards while leaving others untouched.
“He knew exactly what he was going for,” Gappy said. “He reached for our most valuable items.”
“He took the things that were going to hurt us the most and that he knew he was going to get the most value out of,” he added.
The cards, in mint condition and some more than 20 years old, are valued at $50,000.
“He really got us where it hurts,” he said. “He took all of our vintage all of our older stuff, a lot of stuff from us.”
If you have kids, you likely have heard the word Pokémon. Kids of all ages have played the video games and filled up books with the colorful trading cards, which have characters such as Pikachu, Squirtle, and Mew Too, since it debuted in the United States in 1996.
And while they might seem cartoonish, they’re actually big business. The company grossed nearly $11 billion worldwide in 2023. Pokémon cards, much like baseball cards, are graded based on such things as rarity, condition, and popularity.
“A lot of these cards are first-ever printed,” Gappy said as he shuffled through a box of cards. “From base sets to Team Rocket unlimited first editions. It’s just heartbreaking.”
Some of the older and more rare cards can fetch thousands of dollars each from collectors. It also makes them targets for thieves.
Gappy says the hardest part is that most of these cards were part of his personal collection that he either pulled as a kid, or pulled with his daughter
“I honestly felt defeated the amount of time that me and my wife had put into this, just building it up,” he said. “It’s really only been us two and a couple close friends that really have helped us get to where we’re at.”
Gappy is offering a $15,000 reward for information on who robbed First Edition Finds.