Large Pokemon Factory Theft Comes to Light, But Probably Didn’t Impact Fans

Water Pokémon Master

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Thefts from Pokemon’s printing factories became a noticeable trend during the pandemic. Strapped employees would pluck a few cards off the production line and sell them on the black market, hoping to cash in on the TCG’s booming popularity. This is why photos of unrevealed cards began leaking on social media in 2020. Sometimes the thieves would even steal from distribution centers, long after the factories shipped out the completed product.


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In typical Nintendo fashion, TPCi and its partners dispatched investigators to plug the leaks along the chain. Although we refused to cover these leaks on PokeBeach, we actively followed and investigated each of them (including many fans don’t know about)...

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Y'know, y'all said that this wouldn't have impacted the production much, BUT... there WAS that ONE pallet of booster boxes that got shipped to Canada where the pull rates of the booster boxes were not only messed up, but JUICED up. Those were the infamous "God Boxes" of Fusion Strike, and they had as many as 15 or more Full Arts, many of which were incorrectly placed in the Reverse slot. I have to wonder if those God Boxes were a result of the thievery at the factory!
 
What the… what happened to the post I just made?

TL;DR - I call nonsense on this theft not having an effect on pull rates since there were reports of people opening up packs with an empty rare slot (or a common/uncommon card replacing the rare in ‘em) and that this incident was probably what caused TPCi to buy Millennium Print Group back in 2022.
Y'know, y'all said that this wouldn't have impacted the production much, BUT... there WAS that ONE pallet of booster boxes that got shipped to Canada where the pull rates of the booster boxes were not only messed up, but JUICED up. Those were the infamous "God Boxes" of Fusion Strike, and they had as many as 15 or more Full Arts, many of which were incorrectly placed in the Reverse slot. I have to wonder if those God Boxes were a result of the thievery at the factory!
Those were definitely factory error boxes but they more than likely came from a different facility.
 
What the… what happened to the post I just made?

TL;DR - I call nonsense on this theft not having an effect on pull rates since there were reports of people opening up packs with an empty rare slot (or a common/uncommon card replacing the rare in ‘em) and that this incident was probably what caused TPCi to buy Millennium Print Group back in 2022.

Those were definitely factory error boxes but they more than likely came from a different facility.
Feel free to challenge the article with any facts and evidence you can find and present them here. I'm interested to see these reports about empty slots.
 
Y'know, y'all said that this wouldn't have impacted the production much, BUT... there WAS that ONE pallet of booster boxes that got shipped to Canada where the pull rates of the booster boxes were not only messed up, but JUICED up. Those were the infamous "God Boxes" of Fusion Strike, and they had as many as 15 or more Full Arts, many of which were incorrectly placed in the Reverse slot. I have to wonder if those God Boxes were a result of the thievery at the factory!
That makes 0 sense. How would stolen product up the pull rates?
 
the reason why it doesn't affect the pull rare, is that because the line where packs come together are in these plastic boxes on the production line where the seed randomly inserts the hits. the plastic box instructs people on which cards go into which hits are supposed to go there. Ergo, if the feeder is fed correctly, the pull rates should not be affected... if that is the way it is supposed come together.

However, on a personal note, this still does not discount that the human element, it could still be possible that someone loads the wrong cards into the feed box where the hits would be. Remember: there might be people that kept tabs on where is which box, but no one would bother to check a box that is labeled correctly, and it is where it is supposed to be. As a rule, there has to be much less Secret/AAs that are printed. If someone were to just... label a box full of garbage and replace it, none would be the wiser, right?

That last bit is pure conjecture, but it is definitely possible if this was how loose they handled security a year or so back.
 
The question is what the printing line does if a good chunk of the rare cards are gone. Does it alert the printing press, replace the missing expected card with something else, or do they have a process for this?

Regardless of whether or not this affected pull rates, what matters is how people perceive the situation. This is an incredibly bad look and TPC/Nintendo should honestly be on top of their PR game. Folks will happily waste their money to gamble on shiny cardboard, but if hysteria arises about "rigged packs", it may make some folks avoid packs. Sure, in the grand scheme of things this'll go away, but you never know if a small issue will quickly snowball or not.
 
I wouldn't weigh on one side or the other, instead insist on TPCi to address this issue and release the report about the damage - or what was used to prevent the damage. We are talking about a de facto gambling product which rates might have been affected. If this was a genuine gambling product, then it wouldn't just be private investigators involved.

As for the scale, even if Pokemon prints "27 million cards a day", the pull rate of a Secret Rare is around 1 in 360. If you stole 1000 Secret Rares, you affected 360000 cards. The photo looks like thousands of rares, probably above 10.000. That's minimum 3.6 million cards affected. (Assuming it impacted pull rates).
 
I wouldn't weigh on one side or the other, instead insist on TPCi to address this issue and release the report about the damage - or what was used to prevent the damage. We are talking about a de facto gambling product which rates might have been affected. If this was a genuine gambling product, then it wouldn't just be private investigators involved.

As for the scale, even if Pokemon prints "27 million cards a day", the pull rate of a Secret Rare is around 1 in 360. If you stole 1000 Secret Rares, you affected 360000 cards. The photo looks like thousands of rares, probably above 10.000. That's minimum 3.6 million cards affected. (Assuming it impacted pull rates).
How many of the 27 million printed are also energy, and code cards? You get nearly as many energy in an ETB as you do regular cards...
 
Largest ever theft of retail lottery scratch-off tickets occurs, but don't worry it won't effect your chances of winning. See how that logic doesn't really stand up when used in a different scenario. Until PTCI can confirm that pull rates weren't affected by this theft, then there's literally nothing other than speculation driving opinions at this point. Maybe it wouldn't have affected later print runs, but there's no way you're going to convince me that many hits were stolen and the consumers felt no repercussions from it.
 
This article is incredibly interesting! I would love to be able to read more about this or follow up on other incidents (although I completely understand if that is against Pokebeach policy), but if other information of other thefts like this or a link to other, similar articles could be provided, I would greatly appreciate it.
 
Pokemon TCG NEEDS to come out and make a statement pertaining to all this. At the very least they need to tell us what happen, when it happen, and how they will prevent it moving forward. Completely 0 faith that we are getting legitimate packs currently. This has to be addressed
 
Even if this dosen't affect pull rates somehow, FST and EVS especially are some of the most expensive sets in standard and if these cards were redistributed in some way, either as a giveaway or to lcs's the prices of those cards would drop dramatically. Rn espeon is at $170, Gengar is at $187, and they got 3 stacks of each not to mention what could be hiding in the boxes.

Edit: I know most of the cards there are lower value stuff like Greedent Vmaxes and Rainbow non-staples. It dosen't change the fact that it shouldn't have happened in the first place. Hopefully a statement gets released soon because I'd LOVE to know what's to become of these cards.
 
As Clear and HershelLayton have pointed out, the question of whether these pull rates effected customers comes down to what happens if the if the tray is gone. Water Pokémon Master's theory was a perfectly valid one, and his suggestion that pull rates were not affected. Clear's note on the human element is important to take into account, however.
The lottery tickets analogy definitely swings on whether a random, deliberately mislabeled box of bulk was shoved into the machine, but the important difference to note is that the lottery ticket itself isn't generating the prize. The prize itself stands on its own, and will roll over to next month if no ticket is called. Unless I'm imagining the wrong kind of lottery. The effect, no doubt, is felt the most by people who opened packs with obviously incorrect card arrangements, but, as Water Pokémon Master pointed out, he's open to new evidence.
Pokémon already did one of the best things they could do to make amends for this that was both economically feasible and marketably sustainable... desaturate the pull rates of chase cards. Those Hyper Rares would only be in one out of three boxes, and the Alternate Arts (including the Ultra Rare V's, which, you may notice, were unaffected by this theft) were rarer still. Now, however, you have about as good a chance of pulling a Gardevoir ex Illustration Super Rare as you do of pulling an Ultra Rare Team Star Grunts. Two Ultra Rares and a Super Illustration Rare in each box rivals the Japanese booster boxes, and, while the Double Rares and Illustration Rares are still only equal to one Japanese box, you get all the Rares and half the Reverse Holos in the set in a single box. (Which means, with a couple of booster boxes, you should be able to trade around to get the whole set of Reverse Holos, something which I've heard surprisingly little about.) Nowadays, stealing a pallet from the factory would have far less of an impact on the pull rates. It only remains to be seen whether the Illustration Super Rares will fall any lower ($60 is still expensive for what is essentially a Character Secret Rare, but it could be worse if you compare Miraidon ex to many Alternate Art V's and VMAXs. It is strange, however, that the base level Illustration Rares are about twice as expensive as the ones from Crown Zenith, so perhaps the set will continue to decrease in price and Miraidon ex will settle into a $20-40 range, with the less expensive Illustration Secret Rares following suit.)
The boxes with multiple hyper rares are their own problem. Most likely the causes behind that pallet will never come to light.
Poke Jordan, you're a content developer, right? You once suggested that people should read your own content when 4 Regieleki VMAX were missing from a decklist in the Scarlet & Violet set review article. Here's a story about Water Pokémon Master. Years ago, an ad for Pokémon Black and White appeared in the Zoroark: Master of Illusions movie during its debut in Japan. Water Pokémon Master payed a visit to Japan at this time and met with a contact who had taken pictures of this ad, which he published on the blog. Well, several people from various forums, both in Japan and the United States, started clamoring that Water Pokémon Master should be arrested for publishing copyrighted video footage. They had the law on their side, but the strange thing was that there really wasn't that much new stuff in the video, and it had already been seen by thousands of fans in Japan. Yet Pokémon fans still chose an ad that was public knowledge overseas... over a human being. The ad was a marketing tool, not an entire episode of Pokémon the Series. It was intellectual property to promote intellectual property, not something Pokémon hoped to market on live TV, then on DVD's, and finally on streaming services. This is where the story gets interesting. Water Pokémon Master. Water Pokémon Master publicly compared this action to Serebii's much-acclaimed archive of Pokémon the Series screenshots, which was particularly poignant because some of the attackers were from the Serebii forums (as far as I know, though, Joe Merrick was not involved). Now, the legal justice system in Japan is confession based. Had Pokémon stepped in then, it would have been over. But, the storm blew over, and Water Pokémon Master returned to America. Ultimately, Pokémon didn't want to prosecute a human simply for the case of self-enrichment, or to sate the appetite of fickle fans, and they knew it hadn't hurt their advertisement campaign (or their box office sales) at all. The point is, I doubt Water Pokémon Master is losing sleep over making Pokémon upset. The worst he could receive is a Cease and Desist, if he approaches his news program with integrity, like he has so far.
By the way, @Water Pokémon Master, I think there's a statement you might consider adding to the article. It was shared by a Twitter user named SBCoop89, and was shared with me by a friend, which was how I first found out about this event. (I don't have Twitter myself, so I would never have seen it otherwise.) Hopefully this is what @geffres is looking for?
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Hope you're doing well, Water Pokémon Master.
 
Amazing reporting! Thanks for your hard work behind the scenes! Every bit of work contributes to the overall safety of this hobby, so to all those at PokeBeach you rock!

Can you share how you reached the tip line or crime reporting people at TCPi so we are all armed with the tools to defend our hobby?
 
I have no photo evidence of this, but something interesting to note- in my Charizard UPC, there were four FST packs, and all of them had some unique errors within them (no other set had this). One pack had all the cards kinda stuck together, one had extremely saturated colors, one had a code card with an ungodly amount of spacing between the letters, and most interesting and relevant, one had an additional code card in place of the rare, an alt art Mew in the reverse slot, and all the uncommons, code, and sadly also the Mew had a dent in the back in the exact same spot. This might come from unrelated rush jobs of printing packs for the holiday release of the UPC, but given the people talking about the missing rare in FST packs, thought I would weigh in. If I had to guess, if my packs were impacted by this, it would have something to do with the machine going haywire in the absence of certain pieces being present? I have no idea, but this is all a fascinating case.
 
I have no photo evidence of this, but something interesting to note- in my Charizard UPC, there were four FST packs, and all of them had some unique errors within them (no other set had this). One pack had all the cards kinda stuck together, one had extremely saturated colors, one had a code card with an ungodly amount of spacing between the letters, and most interesting and relevant, one had an additional code card in place of the rare, an alt art Mew in the reverse slot, and all the uncommons, code, and sadly also the Mew had a dent in the back in the exact same spot. This might come from unrelated rush jobs of printing packs for the holiday release of the UPC, but given the people talking about the missing rare in FST packs, thought I would weigh in. If I had to guess, if my packs were impacted by this, it would have something to do with the machine going haywire in the absence of certain pieces being present? I have no idea, but this is all a fascinating case.
I’m sorry to hear about the damaged cards. It’s still nice you pulled an alternate art Mew V, though. Even with a dent, it’s still probably a $25-30 card, and it would have felt worse if the card had been in the pack with the cards all stuck together and half the artwork peeled off. I was given a Flareon ex with several creases and a faint, blueish stain about a year ago by an online acquaintance who had bought a Near Mint one and was offering the old one around, and it’s still a fun addition to my collection. But yes, it’s still painful when the card could have looked better. I can relate to that as well, as the owner of a Milotic Holo Rare from Darkness Ablaze that I accidentally left an unsightly crease on after pulling it from a pack and jamming it into my binder a little too forcefully. It’s not nearly as valuable, but I found it upsetting because my memories of it are too fond for me to replace it with a better one.
 
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