In mid-September, around 300 trading cards were stolen from Enter The Battlefield gaming shop in Newmarket, Ontario. Security footage showed an individual smashing and kicking in the shop’s front door and then heading behind the cash register before loading trading cards valued at around $150,000 into a bag.
“We came in and saw that the showcases for the Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon singles were ravaged, and our cards were taken,” recalled Kris Fekete, owner of the shop, to CTV News. However, weeks later, Fekete received better news: The thieves had been arrested.
On October 1, two men came into another shop, OMG Games store in Barrie, and offered to offload a suspiciously large amount of Magic cards.
“One of our employees noticed right away that it matched pretty well,” said Rick Bates, OMG Games owner. “Matched a lot of the cards that were missing.” The store carefully contacted both Fekete and York Regional Police without the suspects being alerted. Bates and his staff stalled the suspects for 30-40 minutes.
“I was talking about concerns about counterfeits,” Bates continued. “[My colleague] was just doing small talk, keeping them distracted.” After Barrie police officers arrived, they arrested the two Georgina men, charging them with possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000. The recovered cards were valued between $30,000 and $40,000, roughly 25% of what was originally stolen.
“Magic: The Gathering [was a] fantastic way to get through grade school. Pokemon I played for far too long,” recalled Constable James Dickson from York Regional Police, who had a nostalgiac trip looking over the cards. “The fact that the store owner was able to stall these people was very beneficial for both the York Regional Police, for our victim, as well as for the Barrie Police to get there.”
Police say there’s no evidence to charge the two suspects with break-and-enter concerning that initial September incident, noting that the top priority for investigators remains recovering the rest of the stolen cards.
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