Scammers reap $163,000 from Pokemon Card collectors

An uptick of e-commerce scams involving Pokemon Trading cards has seen 53 cases reported with losses amounting to at least $163,000 since January 2025.

Victims would encounter listings of Pokemon Trading cards on Carousell and Facebook, offering entire cases of cards deemed as rare and limited in stock.

Upon expressing interest in the cards, the sellers would convince the buyers to move the conversation to messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp to arrange for the order.

Victims would pay by PayNow or bank transfer, only to discover later that they had been scammed when the cards never arrived, or when sellers became uncontactable.

Such cases have been reported before in Singapore - a man was arrested on Jul 4, 2023, for cheating several victims of $115,000 with Pokemon and One Piece cards.

A woman cheated buyers of $216,873 for the pre-order of Pokemon cards between 2021 and 2022. She was sentenced to 31 month's jail on June 22, 2023.

Pokemon cards can fetch a high price, depending on the card's rarity and/or the nostalgia factor, due to the cards being made since 1996, and reprints of older cards being extremely rare.

This drives fans to buy multiple cases or fork out insane amounts of money to get their hands on a card.

The most expensive Pokemon card to exchange hands was the Illustrator Pikachu, which was made in 1999 and bought for $5.275 million by YouTube influencer Logan Paul in 2022.

Last month, Pokemon Centre Singapore had to halt sales of the latest Prismatic Evolutions set after a crowd of more than 1,000 people gathered outside the store ahead of its launch.

Individual cards from this case were resold at high prices online, with an original printing of the Gold Star Umbreon going for $4,500 on a trading card game website Troll And Toad.

According to the police, at least 53 cases have been reported in 2025. They advise buyers to keep conversations with sellers within the online marketplace platforms.

Buyers should also inspect the product before paying and to carry out the transactions in person. Those seeking more information on scams can go to scamshield.gov.sg