More people investing in Pokemon trading cards

Pokemon trading cards have been targets for shoplifters.

In fact, an employee at a Boardman grocery store told township police that she saw a shopper scanning his groceries, and bag two boxes of Pokemon trading cards without scanning the bar codes.

Last month, a Struthers man was accused of stealing Pokemon cards worth $800 from a Boardman department store.

Some of the cards can be worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Larger boxes of the cards give buyers a higher chance of finding a valuable Pokemon card. One card sold at ICG Hobbies and Games for around $600. Another one sold just a few weeks ago for over $300.

Although cards like this can be rare, getting a big pack of cards increases your odds. Even so, getting one of these cards in a pack is a gamble. 

"The big cards that you know are expensive only go up. So if you hold onto that card let's say for five to 10 years, you can get back twice your money or more," said Jessica Vaughn, store manager at ICG Hobbies and Games in Niles.

Vaughn said although this is true for the more valuable cards, a lot of the cards stay around the same price. At ICG, customers have been investing in Pokemon cards more frequently in the past couple years. 

Gaming stores like ICG often keep Pokemon cards behind the counter to prevent people from stealing them. If someone wants to buy a card, they need to ask the employee to get it out of the display.

Vaughn said people of all age groups buy Pokemon cards, but they are most popular with collectors and people who grew up when Pokemon first came out in the mid-90s.

Pokemon was first established in Japan in 1996 with the launch of the Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green video games for the Game Boy system. The video games were released internationally in 1998 as Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue.