A Tacoma card shop is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest after burglars broke in and made off with sealed boxes of Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards. It is the third time in a matter of months that Northwest Sportscards has been targeted by criminals, according to the shop's owner.
The burglary happened Monday, when suspects used a pickup truck to smash through the shop's warehouse door, according to KING5. Owner Don Knutsen, who has run the business for nearly 40 years, said the string of crime targeting his shop began in July, making this the third hit in recent months.
A separate KING5 report on the gaming store's burglary described two people breaking into the store around 5 a.m., using a black pickup truck fitted with a hard bed cover to force entry. Surveillance video reviewed by the station showed the burglars grabbing mostly Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering material, and the business said it was still working on a complete list of missing inventory.
Eight Totes of Cards Gone in Minutes
Surveillance footage shows the burglars using a black Dodge pickup truck to break through the rear warehouse door before filling about eight large totes with sealed boxes of trading cards. Knutsen described the experience as devastating and violating, and he said replacing the stolen inventory and repairing the damage could put real strain on both the business and his family.
He said replacing product and fixing doors, windows or display cases can run into many tens of thousands of dollars, and the math behind recovering from a theft like this is brutal: Knutsen said the shop would need to sell ten times the value of what was stolen just to break even, since a retailer only pockets a fraction of a card's sale price as profit. Northwest Sportscards must now make up sales lost to the theft on top of everything else.
RJ Middleton, a customer of the shop, said the costs of recovering from a burglary like this only compound the harm already done. Tacoma police have said the July burglary and Monday's break-in are likely connected, though investigators have not said whether anyone has been identified or arrested.
A Reward and a Request for Tips
Knutsen said he remains hopeful that investigators will identify those responsible, and he said he believes detectives will ultimately catch the people behind the thefts. Tacoma police are asking anyone with information about the burglary to come forward, and Northwest Sportscards is accepting reward inquiries by email at [email protected].
Part of a National Wave Hitting Card Shops
Tacoma is far from alone. In Nashville, two suspects allegedly smashed the glass front door of the Game Cave on Lebanon Pike in September 2024 and made off with Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards the owner valued at more than $31,000, according to WSMV. In Wisconsin, Cardboard Empires in Richfield and Sped's Collectibles in the Town of Barton were both burglarized within a month of each other, with losses reported at $40,000 and $20,000 respectively, per TMJ4.
An even larger hit struck Goldenrod City Collectibles in Twin Lakes, where more than $300,000 worth of trading cards, mostly Pokémon, were stolen after four men broke in and smashed through glass cases, the same station reported separately. A store owner and employee quoted in that coverage described the thefts as part of a growing trend of Pokémon cards being stolen from stores across the country as individual card values keep climbing.
Why Cardboard Is Suddenly Worth So Much
The market behind these burglaries has exploded. Pokémon card values have risen more than 145% since March of the previous year, according to Card Ladder data cited by CNN, with buyers spending $450 million on Pokémon cards in a single January alone. More than 75 billion Pokémon cards had been produced by March 2025, including 10.2 billion printed in just the preceding twelve months.
The grading side of the hobby has boomed too. Sales of new trading-card-game products reached $2.5 billion in 2025, according to ICv2 data reported by CNBC, and PSA graded more than 19 million cards that year, up from just two million in 2020. Trading-card games now make up half of PSA's business, more than all sports cards combined, the outlet noted. At the top end of the market, a first-edition base-set Charizard in Grade 10 sold at auction for $528,000, and Logan Paul reportedly flipped a PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator card for $16.492 million, according to CNN.
For now, Knutsen is focused on the immediate task of recovering what he can and keeping his shop running while he waits on word from investigators. Anyone with information about the Tacoma burglary is urged to contact Tacoma police.
