Danica Davidson
January 30, 2024 
Some thieves recently broke into Tofu’s Trading, a collectable card store located in San Jose, California. The alarm didn’t sound the way it should have, though video captured imagery of the thieves, including one crawling around. Police were soon on the scene, but not before the thieves had snatched the cash register and about 35,000 Pokémon cards and made a break for it.
Despite the awful event, the store is finding some humor in the situation. For example, the thieves grabbed cards worth a dollar up to a few hundred dollars — but they didn’t know how to get the really pricey stuff. For example, they broke in two days before the release of an annual set of cards worth a lot of money.
“A lot of stuff [is] releasing this week and we thought it was funny, we were like – oh these people don’t realize that it releases on Friday not like on Wednesday at 2 a.m.,” remarked store manager Amy Simpson, who also commented, “I don’t think they were in for hobby necessarily because they didn’t know what to take.”
Some of the video footage was put online, edited with other footage, and with sound effects added. It’s partly supposed to be funny, and also partly supposed to spread awareness on the theft.
STOLEN POKEMON: A collectable trading card store in San Jose is sharing surveillance video of their break-in from Wednesday. More than 35,000 Pokémon cards were taken. @tofustrading edited the video to take this bad time & find a little humor in it. 1/2@abc7newsbayarea pic.twitter.com/OUZyTFuXXp
— LaurenABC7 (@LaurenABC7) January 26, 2024
Tofu’s Trading’s stream and operations manager Anna Ma said about the video editing, “We do have a sense of humor, so it was really silly to see them crawling. We also like to take a bad time and find a little humor in it. There’s not much we can do right now, so there’s no point in moping over it so might as well make people laugh.”
If you know anything about who the thieves were, or would like to support Tofu’s Trading during this time, their website is here.
Source: ABC7
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
