A Pokémon Store Was Robbed At Gunpoint, But It’s Only Made Its Community Stronger

Earlier this month, Poké Court, a Pokémon card and collectible shop in the Manhattan Meatpacking District, was holding a community event where fans gathered to decorate top loaders for their cards. The event was a first of its kind for the store, which opened in November. But that’s not why the people there that night will remember it. The event was crashed by a group of masked robbers who held the store up at gunpoint, smashed glass cases and shelves,  and stole over $100,000 worth of collector’s merchandise. “They just grabbed whatever they could,” said owner Courtney Chin.

Stories like this have unfortunately become more and more common as the scalper market has become a quick money-making scheme for people who don’t even care about Pikachu, Charizard, or any of the other monsters in the series. Stores have reported everything from armed robberies and being assaulted with pepper spray to people tunneling into stores like they’re in a heist movie. 

A store in Huntington Beach, California got hit right before the recent Christmas holiday. Thieves reportedly burrowed through some part of the shop’s roof. “It’s hard not to worry with so many other stores being hit,” the owner, Jerry Hernandez, told the Los Angeles Times. “I feel like once we got hit and some of the other shops got hit it created a snowball effect.”

© Photo: Kenneth Shepard

When I went to Poké Court this week, located on a cobblestone side street close to the Hudson River, the shelves were mostly still empty, but they did have a bouquet of flowers sitting on them next to some of the Pokémon card top loaders fans had come together to decorate. If I hadn’t already known about the smash and grab, there would have been little to suggest Poké Court had been the target of a terrible crime. 

It was the middle of a cold Manhattan January afternoon, and the store still had dozens of customers coming in and out to joyfully buy and open trading card packs at the shop’s bartop. But if you paid attention, there were clues to what had happened. Before I even spoke to anyone in the store, a customer was offering their condolences to the staff, who graciously accepted their kind words. In the corner of the entrance, Chin was putting the store’s new security system through its paces. 

“A world we must defend”

Chin started what would become a brick-and-mortar shop in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country out of her second bedroom after getting back into Pokémon collecting in a “really intense way.” She wanted to create something more “specialized” than your average card shop. Trading cards have become such a lucrative hobby and business that most collectible stores diversify their stock, carrying sports cards alongside the Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokémon packs people love. Poké Court is meant to be a place where Pokémon fans can reliably show up and know the store is dedicated to the franchise they’re obsessed with, and is staffed by people with extensive experience and knowledge about its long and hype-fueled history.

“These are my friends who also grew up having the same core memories and really loving the franchise and thinking about all the values of Pokémon that we really resonate with,” Chin tells me. “We love the idea of community. We love the idea of trust, and even the theme song’s ‘being the very best,’ right? It tries to bring out the best in people, and it teaches you about resilience and hardship. And I think there are a lot of core lessons that my generation really took to heart.”

While many Pokémon sellers will go to larger community events and card shows, Chin says that having the brick-and-mortar location makes it less feasible to uproot the shop to do temporary events. But that physical presence also helps anchor the business and foster a local community, one that has weathered the changing, difficult storms of Pokémon collecting’s post-Covid, scalper-addled chaos. 

“When I first started, I used to price things at MSRP or even below,” Chin says. “I would want to have the best prices so people would always come to my shop and buy from me. Once it became all about money, we would have some individuals—I don’t want to assign a label to them—but they would come and just buy everything and then immediately sell it. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a free market. But then they got really creative and they started botting our site. So we would drop something on our site and then we would immediately get flooded with hundreds of orders from the same individuals buying out all of our products. Then we would get an angry response from our actual customers and our regulars and they’re like, ‘You didn’t save anything.’”

In response, Poké Court has had to adjust prices, which Chin acknowledges raises the barrier to entry for some people. But the lengths to which people would go to buy out all of the shop’s stock for cheap and then flip it became “unsavory,” even escalating into shouting matches and fights outside the store.

“It really shouldn’t be about the money but unfortunately that’s what everyone focuses on because it’s so attention grabbing,” Chin says. “Then people get excited, they’re like, ‘oh, my collection is now worth $1,000 instead of $100. I’ve made so much money.’”

Fights are one thing, but threats of gun violence were something else entirely. Chin was in the store’s back room when Poké Court’s top loader event was wrapping up. Around 40 customers and 14 employees were in the store at the time, including folks who just wanted to hang out for the festivities. Chin knew something was wrong the second she heard the sound of glass shattering. Employees and customers rushed to the back of the store for safety as the robbers went to work. 

© Photo: Kenneth Shepard

Chin was able to hit the store’s panic button and call the police. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but thousands of dollars worth of vintage and rare merchandise from across the Pokémon franchise’s 30 years was gone. That’s where most reports about what happened at Poké Court end, but that’s not the whole story. 

“Our courage will pull us through”

“I thought that our shop would be deserted and everyone would be scared and employees would resign because they feel like this is an unsafe work environment, but it was almost the opposite,” Chin says. “Everyone really bonded together and wanted to stay here longer. After the robbery, everyone could have gone home, which is the rational thing to do, but everyone, we had 50 people here, and they all wanted to stay. They all stood in line and gave their statements to the police, and they all wanted to be here for each other.”

The New York Poké Court community showed up for each other, but as word of the shop’s story spread, Chin says the broader Pokémon community has reached out in support as well. Big content creators have shared the store’s community fund that’s raised thousands of dollars. Even big names in Pokémon like Ash Ketchum voice actor Sarah Natochenny started reaching out on social media. Chin says the store has gotten an influx of job applications, too.

“They’re like, ‘I want to work for you’ and I’m like, ‘We just got held up. I can’t believe you would want to spend more time in this spot.’ So I think that it’s very encouraging that people are bouncing back even harder than ever. We’re not going to let a robbery stop us.”

© Photo: Kenneth Shepard

The support has gone beyond just people donating money. Some have offered musical performances in-store while others bring in food for staff. The immediate pillow of support has been a “big morale booster” for the team. While the Poké Court has been in headlines over one of the worst things that could have happened to it, Chin wants people to know that the Pokémon community is more than just collectors chasing the most valuable cards.

“One of the most common misconceptions is that the Pokémon community is full of people who only are in it for the money or only care about investing or are scalpers,” she says. “You just hear the worst, right? But for better or for worse, this robbery has shown how people can come together in a really positive and genuinely heartwarming way to support total strangers, to support their local card shop, to support all the people who were absolutely traumatized by this experience. I’ve just been floored and humbled and I’m so thankful that there’s this massive community.”

As the shop’s story has spread on social media, neighboring card shops around the state have also been reaching out about the stolen merchandise, verifying certification numbers in case the robbers try to sell what they took. The entire thing has made Chin feel like the shop has a “network of friends” that expands far beyond New York City.

When I left Poké Court this week, it was just as full of Pokémon fans as it’s ever been, though it now has additional security. There was a version of the store’s future where fans stopped showing up to buy and open packs, scared off by the threat of violence over a hobby that’s supposed to be about bringing people together. Instead, the store is bouncing back, thanks in no small part to a community that was never in it for the money to begin with. They were in it for each other and the friends they’ve met along the way through a shared love of Pokémon.