Police Probe Pricey Pokémon Pilferage

JULY 19--Police are investigating the reported theft of Pokémon cards valued in excess of $500,000 from a man who kept the first edition collectibles in a temperature-controlled room in his South Carolina residence.

Christopher Polydorou, a 62-year-old insurance broker, last week reported the Pokémon pilferage to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office, according to a police report.

Polydorou, who lives in a 6800-square-foot waterfront home, told police that the cards were swiped from his “collectible room,” which also houses his baseball, football, and basketball cards. Polydorou, a divorced father of two adult children, lives with his fiancée in the seven-bedroom residence he purchased in 2014 for $431,000.

According to the police report, Polydorou told investigators that the only other individuals to enter his collectibles room in the past nine months were workers with an HVAC company.

The report states that the Pokémon cards were “valued at a half a billion dollars,” which Polydorou told TSG was a typo on the part of cops. Additionally, Polydorou said three unopened boxes of cards were stolen, not one-and-a-half.

Polydorou said that he purchased the Pokémon cards more than 20 years ago, and that the unopened boxes each held 24 packs of cards. One of the boxes, he said, contained a valuable Japanese edition of the cards.

The Pokémon collection was not insured, said Polydorou, who added that his valuation of the cards was based on recent auction sales that netted sellers six figures for similar first-edition boxes that were issued in 1999. (1 page)