Thieves stole $300,000 in gaming trading cards at Gen Con 2023

A pair of men walked off with a pallet of boxes as vendors set up for the convention.

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A pair of thieves waltzed into Gen Con 2023 in Indianapolis and stole as much as $300,000 of gaming cards (via IndyStar). The cards, which were sitting in boxes on a pallet, were stolen using a pallet jack while vendors were setting up for the long-running yearly gaming convention that Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax started.

As for what cards were taken, that’s unknown. IndyStar reported that a worker at a local board game store thought the packaging resembled that of Magic: the Gathering, Pokémon Trading Card Game, and the unreleased Disney Lorcana. Ravensburger, the company that makes Disney Lorcana, tweeted that all of its product is accounted for. Convention-goers waited for as much as 16 hours for the card game, which Ravensburger used Gen Con 2023 as a pre-release venue for.

Indianapolis Police issued a pair of tweets Friday and Saturday asking for help from the public in identifying two people caught on surveillance video taking the pallet:

This isn’t the only recent card game theft in the Indianapolis area. In May, local media reported a thief broke into a gaming store in Indianapolis suburb Brownsburg and shoved an estimated $15,000 worth of Magic: the Gathering cards into a pizza delivery bag.

The cards can be incredibly valuable — see that time Post Malone, who is known for his spendy MTG habits, bought the “One Ring” card, which is probably worth somewhere between $1 million and $2 million. That’s quite a bit more than the paltry $615,000 that an autographed Black Lotus recently commanded.