Friesland woman's stolen Pokémon cards returned thanks to alert shopowner

A Friesland woman got some of her stolen Pokémon cards returned thanks to an alert shopowner in Spijkenisse who recognized the collection when someone else tried to sell it. The perpetrator was recently sentenced to community service for being in possession of stolen goods. The court valued the cards at around 4,000 euros.

But it wasn’t about the money for the 32-year-old woman from Friesland, it was about getting her cards back, and one in particular - Feraligatr12, she told Rijnmond by email.

“When I was 10, there was a card that came out that I thought was really beautiful. I didn’t have it, and there was no one on the schoolyard who had it either. There was nothing in circulation to trade, and there was no way I would ever get it,” she said. “I could only look at the card on Google. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. To me, it was a museum piece.” Her parents ended up printing out a photo of the card, and the A4 sheet hung in her room for years.

Years later, as an adult, she told her friend about that one unattainable card. A few months later, on her birthday, she received a letter from this friend, with Feraligatr12 included. “It was such an emotional moment of happiness that it was hard to describe. But this card and that moment meant a lot to me. It was so sincere and so sweet, and I really appreciated it.”

Last year, she sent her most precious cards to have them carefully packed and registered by a company. The company received the cards and returned them by post, but they never arrived in Friesland. “Lost in the mail, I was told,” she said. “I laid awake at night because of it and came home every day hoping to see a parcel delivery. Days turned into months, and my hope sank. I found it very difficult to accept that all my most precious cards were just gone.”

On October 23 last year, founder Ben of game shop 2HG in Spijkenisse was having a quiet day in the store when a man came in. “He wanted to sell cards and said they were his.” Ben immediately noticed that the cards were rare ones and that the man did not know much about them. After a closer look, he recognized the collection. “If something disappears, it is often passed on among sellers. I told him: these are stolen. He was frightened and started to stutter and shake.” Ben told him to bring the rest of the collection the next day or he would call the police.

The man did come back the next day with more cards, but not the whole collection. So Ben made sure he couldn’t leave and called the police. “He stayed calm until the police arrived and told them how he got the cards. They had been stolen from a PostNL shipment. Not by him, but by someone he knew.”

And so the Friesland woman got her cards back. Not all of them, but at least Feraligatr12 was among the returned ones. “If he hadn’t been there, I would probably still be waiting with silent hope for cards that would never be found,” she told the broadcaster. “Ben is wonderful, and I am eternally grateful to him.”