A livestream about Pokémon trading cards ended in a disaster. Booster packs were purchased for $375,000 and opened live on the stream.
Why spend $375,000 on Pokémon cards? The trading card game for Pokémon started in 1999 and is still popular among collectors today. The rarer the card, the higher the value, of course.
On the YouTube channel of Dumb Money LIVE, players opened the presumably most expensive Pokémon box with cards from the first edition. The high price was due to the box supposedly being sold as unopened and intact. So these should be card packs from the very first edition that have never been opened. Collectors’ hearts should race at this.
The cards were intended to be resold next year and the proceeds donated to charity, explains theguardian.com.
Why it turned into a disaster
The seller of the boxes explained: “The owner of the box supposedly bought three of the boxes when he was a child. They have been in the gun safe since then.
After opening the seal, the mood in the stream quickly changed from “excited” to “disappointed/angry”. Because it turned out that the offer was rotten. People in the stream noticed: The box had been opened before, the card packs inside as well. The whole thing had then been resealed with foil. They had fallen for a fake.
First, you hear someone say “This has a different color than this one.” Then the words “This is not a pack from the first edition.”
The person opening the cards notices: “These aren’t even cards from the base set. These are Jungle (another set). Wow. This is a resealed box.”
So it continued: They quickly called the seller and explained the issue of the resealed pack:
“We literally opened the pack live, and they are resealed packs again. It is the Base Set 2 mixed in, half of it is from the 1st edition. But they are all resealed, this is absolutely unacceptable. How are you taking care of this right now?”
They agreed to receive another box from the seller for opening. But it must be thoroughly checked first to exclude such gross errors.
Hopefully, the group doesn’t have their Pokémon cards sent by mail. Because apparently, rare €60,000 cards can also “get lost in the mail” quickly.
