A Stockton man has been charged with five counts tied to a crowbar break-in at a Napa Pokémon card shop in August, after Santa Clara police detained him with some of the stolen merchandise in hand. David Phillip Vanunen, 41, faces charges of commercial burglary, grand theft, vandalism and petty theft, according to Napa County court records.
The case traces back to Aug. 5, when someone forced open the front door of The Card Shop at 1882 El Centro Ave. with a crowbar, according to a Napa police incident report cited by The Napa Valley Register. The same report alleges the intruder made off with Pokémon memorabilia worth more than $1,000 and fled before officers arrived.
Vanunen wasn't connected to the Napa burglary until Santa Clara police detectives detained him separately and found him carrying some of the items reported stolen from the Napa shop. Santa Clara police then alerted their counterparts in Napa that Vanunen was likely the suspect behind the theft, according to police filings cited by the same report. He has been held at Elmwood Correctional Facility in Milpitas since Aug. 11, per a jail inmate directory.
A Second Burglary Allegation, Few Details
An arrest report also alleges Vanunen committed another burglary five days after the first, though the report does not detail what that second incident involved, per the Register's account. Napa County District Attorney Allison Haley's office filed the five-count charges against Vanunen.
The Card Shop is owned by Nestor Paniagua and Luis Fuentes, who got their start selling cards and collectibles at shows around the Bay Area before opening the Napa storefront. The shop primarily stocks Pokémon Trading Card Game products alongside other trading card games, including One Piece, the owners told the Register in a business profile.
Part of a Wider Wave of Card Shop Hits
Napa's burglary lands amid what ABC News has called a string of Pokémon trading card thefts across California and beyond. In Brentwood, masked suspects stole $15,000 worth of Pokémon cards from The Card Lab in under 40 seconds in June, speeding off in a Nissan Altima and remaining at large, according to ABC News. A similar burglary hit Big Pack Hobby Shop in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, where thieves made off with an estimated $40,000 to $50,000 in cards and merchandise.
Southern California has seen its own surge. The Los Angeles Times reported that three suspects broke into Do-We Collectibles in Anaheim by tearing through drywall from a neighboring business, fleeing with roughly $20,000 in cards. Shops in Gardena, Simi Valley and Huntington Beach have also been burglarized, with regional losses topping $500,000 in just two months, authorities told the Times.
Other recent cases include a June burglary at Into the Retroverse in Colton, where two suspects stole at least $16,000 worth of Pokémon products, according to KTLA; the cards were later recovered and Anthony Rey Estavane, 35, of Rialto was arrested. And in Santa Clara, officers responded to a robbery at Rivermark Plaza in June involving an unopened card box estimated at $13,000, with two suspects later arrested in Newark; officers recovered firearms from Joshua Olson's vehicle and also recovered cash, per CBS News.
Why Card Shops Keep Getting Targeted
The thefts coincide with a surge in the Pokémon card market itself. Since early 2025, the market has increased in value by more than 145%, with buyers spending $450 million on cards in January alone, according to Card Ladder data cited by the Register's business profile. That kind of appreciation has turned small hobby shops into targets worth far more than their modest storefronts might suggest.
