Dutch thieves execute daring Pokémon card heist

The criminals—who smashed a van into a Dutch toy store—also stole Legos, apparently

By William Hughes | September 16, 2021 | 10:55pm

Games Features Pokémon

Dutch thieves execute daring Pokémon card heist

This is a Pikachu covered in Swarovski crystals, but it might be more valuable if it was cardboard. Photo: BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP via Getty Images

Toy collecting took a turn for the Die Hard this week, as Vice reports that a Dutch toy shop was recently the target of a dramatic after-hours van-smashing by thieves interested in securing the store’s supply of Pokémon cards and Lego products. Not since the San Francisco Beanie Baby Slayings of 1996—an event so unlikely that we just had to make it up—has so blatant a crime been committed in pursuit of a foil Charizard or whatever it was these guys were after. Per the Vice report, the target of the theft was Dutch toy chain Intertoys, with thieves ramming one of the company’s locations with a van at 9:30 p.m. and making off with as many torsos, limbs, and other Lego minifig parts as they could presumably get their hands on.

Dutch police say it’s not clear yet what, exactly, was stolen, but a manager for the store revealed what he believes the targets were: Pocket monsters and modular bricks. The Pokémon card market is apparently surging at the moment, driven by rising prices for the long-running collectible card game; Target was recently forced to alter its store policies to try to keep the Pokémaniacs, hungry for rare cards that can fetch several hundred dollars in good condition, at bay. Meanwhile—and this is the kind of sentence we live for, honestly—the always tightly controlled Lego market has led to the rise of a “‘Polish Lego Gang,’ a group of international toy thieves who French police have been on the hunt for since 2019.”