Olympia’s Grand Hall hummed with the intensity of a trading floor. Hundreds of dealers stood shoulder to shoulder, jostling behind trestle tables displaying their stock. Above them, an auctioneer’s chant ricocheted off the barrel-vaulted ceiling, livestreamed to bidders who weren’t even in the room. Outside, visitors sheltered from the rain beneath the awnings, smoking damp cigarettes and comparing their spoils in the November gloom.
By mid-afternoon, an estimated £1 million’s worth of goods would change hands. Yet the commodity that had drawn traders from across Britain had little functional or intrinsic worth. The asset class in question: Pokémon cards.
Back inside, the mood at the annual Collectors Showcase was buoyant — almost feverish — except at one corner table. Connor, a dealer in his 30s, was doing his best to carry on: talking to collectors, shaking his head at some offers and nodding at others. But he cut a defeated figure. An empty beer can in the nearby bin hinted at the morning he’d had.
At around 10am, before the public were allowed in, he had set down his £45,000 collection in a locked suitcase while he nipped outside to check on his car. In the few minutes he was gone, the case disappeared. According to Olympia’s security team, a hooded man walked in, lifted the unattended suitcase, walked out again, and drove off.
“My life was in that suitcase,” says Connor. He still hasn’t got it back. Instead he’s joined the ranks of dozens of unfortunate dealers in Britain and beyond. A global Pokémon crime wave, orchestrated by organised gangs, is now well underway.
Pikachu has travelled a long way since that fuzzy, electrified rodent first blinked onto Game Boys in 1996. By the turn of the century, Pokémon had metastasised into a merchandising empire of toys, films, television spin-offs, lunchboxes, bedsheets, even Heinz pasta shapes. For the late-millennial children who grew up with it, the franchise became a lifelong obsession.
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