When you think of collectible cards like Pokémon or Magic the Gathering, most wouldn’t think of currency, but Edmonton police said criminals are using it that way.
In a news release sent out in the beginning of July, EPS said it did a search in two houses in April and found more than $400,000 in illegal drugs and also nearly 60,000 Pokémon, sports and other collectible cards, worth $34,000.
Global News asked Edmonton police for an interview but they declined our requests.
It’s not surprising to Jay Bardyla, who co-owns Rolling Tales Pop Culture in Edmonton. The store was victim to a robbery in December, and Bardyla said the thief stole only collectible cards.
“When they came in, they sort of straight armed all the products into a big duffle bag, all on the floor,” Bardyla said.
Bardyla said he also had expensive comics in the case, but the thief wasn’t interested and left it. He took mostly Magic the Gathering and Pokémon cards.
“When you literally have boxes because you know you’re going to need them for sale, grabbing an entire box is going to net you a few bucks no matter what,” Bardyla said.
He said the criminals likely sell the cards quickly online. If you hold on to them for too long, it could lose value because of a fluctuating market.
“You have a lot of opportunity for cards to be sold on a secondary market, mostly online, which makes it very easy to move product and the cards are untraceable.”
Looking at the recent seizure by Edmonton police, Bardyla said that’s not actually a great haul.
“When you have that many cards, you’re almost at 50 cents a card there. So either the good stuff had already been moved, which is pretty likely, and then everything that was left over was fairly common,” Bardyla said.
Criminologist Dan Jones said using collectible cards as a currency for organized crime is crafty.
“You can store them, you’re not putting them in the bank … I would assume these individuals hope police aren’t catching on to this. So when they do search warrants, they’re not looking for Pokémon cards,” Jones said.
Jones notes this growing trend is already in other countries like Australia and England.
“They are incredibly valuable and the amount of money people are willing to pay for these things is a significant amount of money,” Jones said.
“You can hide tens … of hundreds of thousands of dollars in these cards and use them for your money laundering system.”
Jones stresses as long as criminals are looking at these collectible cards as cash, comic stores will be at risk.
“I think there is a risk to comic book and collectible stores when it becomes currency to use in the drug trade,” Jones said.