Ultra Rare Pokémon Card Sells For $60,000, Gets Lost In The Mail

Dang, that stinks, I hope they can find it.

This is the biggest mistake in Pokemon trading card history.

Man, if I were selling something for $60,000 I'd deliver it personally.

Mind you, I think the real story is that someone would pay $60,000 for a trading card.

This just shows how useless "Signed For" packages are. Anyone can sign for it and that gets the postal service off the hook. Even if it was just a random person on the street.

@WomboCombo Did you actually read the article? It was sent registered - far more securely than certified mail.

@Bunkerneath With registered mail, that shouldn't be the case. You typically have to sign for each item being delivered, so I'm not sure how this would have been signed for as part of a bulk shipment. Seems fishy all around.

@WomboCombo
Try reading the article before commenting. The card was sent in a bulk shipment by registered mail and insured for $50,000. The package was signed for by the receiving company, but the receiving company claims that the card was not in the package. Since the post office can show the package was delivered Nd signed for, they don't have to pay the insurance for the card.

Ah, stupid people and their enormous wealth.

I earn a lot of money, but spending 60.000 dollars on a Pokémon card. Just... Sigh.

For $60k, I would deliver it personally.

Wow...!! 🤯
With $60,000 i can buy 200 Nintendo Switch with MSRP $300 😅

Something is fishy here.
A Pokemon card he probably paid 1$ for, then insure it for 50.000$?
Ships it, and claim it's lost.

Sounds like insurance fraud.

@Ventilator I don't know if you read the third sentence of the article, but here it is again:
"eBay seller pokemonplace had a 'Trainer No. 3' card in their possession, a card which was only given to the third-place winner of a specific 1999 Pokémon competition in Japan."

@nintendoknife Okay then.

At this price they should have paid more to deliver it with a company like DHL, UPS, FedX or something.

@Ventilator Except the insurance can't be claimed as it was sent as part of a bulk package which was signed for.

No, just no. They lost it in the mail? You have got to be kidding. Sure pokémon cards are tiny. But still. Well, another piece of history, gone. 😭 😭 😭

That's a lot of money for a card. Now we just sit and wait for the card to reappear online in couple of days (yeah, some people are just that dumb to try and resell what they stole the next day).

Hopefully this gets ‘found’ like that job lot of PAL SNES carts that were ‘lost’ by USPS last year that I recall reading about on here

Ah, good old United States Postal Service... They sent my Smash Bros. Toon Link amiibo back to Japan after giving me 3 days notice that it arrived. Mind you, this was at a time when I worked overnights; going anywhere between 8am and 8pm was difficult, even on my days off. I was able to get a refund, and luckily, I found one preowned at GameStop, along with Sheik, and I bought both for less than the import.

I can't imagine just mailing a $60,000 dollar item. Like... you've gotta be the most trusting person in the world.

Why send that bulk?! Send the card as it’s own package.

I get nervous selling $100+ dollar games online. I don't think I could bring myself to ship an item that expensive in the mail. That'd have to be personally delivered.

I don't even understand how something like that could happen, the article says they had tracking numbers and everything. Once the item didn't arrive, all they have to do is check who was driving the truck that day. I buy off the internet all the time and have shipped my fair share of items too, this really shouldn't happen.

I smell a rat in the woodpile. Someone definitely swiped that card, no way was it "lost".

Hey Guys I’ve just come into possession of a Pokemon ‘Trainer no.3’ card from a Japanese tournament. Any offers? I’ll deliver it personally as I work for the US mail service

@The_BAAD_Man Yes. You just don't cheap out on shipping price on expensive things.

What kind of loon do you have to be to ship something worth $60k via Postal?! Isn't that why dedicated parcel companies exist? Who takes the cheapest shipping option for stuff worth more than a Mercedes? And then ships it bulk with other stuff?! It could be fraud on the receiving side, but the sending side was just plain reckless. There are special services explicitly for very high value things. They cost a lot of money. Which is fine because you're moving high value things.

"I'm going to ship you 20lbs of gold bullion. I'm going to throw it in a box with a bunch of kids toys and party favors and ship it all as one insured box. " - Said nobody ever, except this guy.

@TempOr You've apparently never been to a U.S. Post Office. As much fun as it is to spend half an hour or more waiting in a line as employees that make Slowbro look speedy take 10 minutes + per customer, only to be told that line is closed and you have to go to another one....only to be told that they're cutting off the line because they're closing in 10 minutes and that's all they can handle in the line..... In a country where the death of retail means you basically have daily deliveries because retail shopping involves a 30-60 minute trip (each way) to get to stores that likely don't have what you want and tell you to order it online on their "expanded catalog"...... The theft risk is preferable. Actually it's simply unavoidable.

My guess is the guy never shipped it (did he ever even posses it?), and the buyer just got scammed out of $60,000.

If you have $60,000 to spend on a card, it wouldn’t hurt to spend extra $200-300 to pick it up wherever it was. That was a dumb mistake.

Rule number one of selling online: the U.S. Postal Service is never responsible for anything, ever.

@Mountain_Man Or the receiver got it and says he didn't. That's the problem of bundling it with trinkets in one box that arrived - either or neither side could be lying. Equal chances entirely.

@Yorumi LOL, it's so true. I have the "big" post office for my area where there's 3 branches. The smaller ones are worse. There's ONE employee there that seems WAY too competent to be working there....I always hope to get him and never do. The building is brand new, demolished and rebuilt in the past 15 years or so, and it already looks worn...though I can't fault that, very high use. But I know that feeling of them expecting it to be all done. There's 3 different forms with 4 different instruction sets in slots to do certified/rregistered, whatever. It's all confusing. You wait for 30 min in line, ask them what you need, then they expect you to go out of line, fill out the one they give you (that's different than the ones in the slots) and get back into line again. Last time it took well over an hour to send a registered envelope.

I also love the delivery people that will stick a huge box into the mailbox, hanging 3/4 of the way out, and bending the metal of the box. Or the guy that hung a 15lb $250 package off the outgoing mail FLAG at the street!

Just a quality operation all the way around. There's definitely REALLY good people at the PO. My current delivery guy is top notch (or one of them, anyway.) And that one guy at the desk. But there's one great one for every 8 horrible ones.

And that's the big PO. I went to the little one once just to send a quick thing. Kind of podunk, it's literally an old RPO office from the steam train days, right off the old track. But it FEELS like one of those Christmas cartoons in the old train station where there's only one guy. I got in line, in the completely empty post office at the one counter. The guy was standing there. He put a closed sign up and told me to go to the next counter (3 feet away.) So I went around and went to that counter, and he just steps over to that one and does it - he was the only one there.

If I bought something for 60K I'd want it to be obtained in person, there is no way this got lost by accident.

The United States Postal Service doesn't lose things, they steal things.

Never trust the post office. The postmaster in my town was fired for the unending theft of cash, checks, and lottery tickets sent in the mail on their watch.

@ALinkttPresent Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.

I believe people choose to send USPS because it is a federal agency. Tampering with USPS mail/packages (even the mailbox itself) is a federal offense that can get you 5 years in federal prison and up to $250,000 in fines.

@NEStalgia Since the original courier reported that they never received the card, that puts my suspicion on the seller.

$60,000 for a pokemon card? That's crazy!

Also I can't imagine how unbelievably ticked the buyer is. Hopefully the buyer gets refunded.

@Mountain_Man i don't see mention of an original courier. The seller (stupidly) shipped it with other items, to a middle man for distribution (why?)... But that was the usps recipient claiming that one item wasnt in the box. The seller could have not included it and sent the other goods knowing it world set up a scam. Or the seller is legit and this Aramex middle man stole the one valuable item from the box because who would know? Meanwhile, the seller is out the card and the buyer will not get the item (because the middle man has it) and will get an ebay claim for 60k. Thus the buyer is unharmed, the middle man got a 60k gift, and the seller just lost their valuables.

Could be either....

@NEStalgia A BOLT OF BRILLIANCE!

@frogopus I have no qualms what others do but that makes me sad.

I'd rather someone pay a ridiculous amount of money on something because it'll make them happier in life, even if others find it bizzare than just to get more money in the future which well, may not happen and certainly can't be taken with you. :/

On a less depressing note!
I'm sorry the US postal service is rubbish vs couriers.
More the other way around here with my experiences.

@LuciferOnReddit Maybe they already do? Maybe this was their (yearly??!) treat?
Maybe not I don't know!

But we're all quick to judge when I know i could buy less games and give more for sure and I'm probably near the bottom of 'richness' of people here. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

@LuciferOnReddit Could you not say the same about people that buy video games (myself included)? I mean, all that money people spend on video games every year, could instead be donated to homeless shelters, or put to good charities instead.

After all, people could save so many problems if they would stop wasting their money on such idiotic material things. Of course, nobody even thinks that far ahead. Humanity in a nutshell and all that other stuff.

@MBII "@vitelus shut up" I agree with this statement.

Mr. Krabs would not be proud.

@LuciferOnReddit 60 dollar game here, 60 dollar game there... all that money adds up if you saved it for a year and donated it to a charity, it would make a world of difference.

That being said it's your money spend it on whatever you want, just don't expect people to spend their money on making the world a better place if you yourself aren't going to do the same thing. If this person wants to spend 60,000 on what I presume to be an ultra-rare one of a kind card (I don't read Japanese but I assume the year is most likely dated on it, making it the only one from that year) then that's their prerogative to do so.

Ok but the real question is...
WHAT DOES THE POKEMON CARD SAY/DO!? Somebody here MUST read Japanese, right?

OK, one rule of thumb, NEVER send something so valuable through normal postal services. ESPECIALLY USPS. Go for a courier service, it's much safer, and considering it costed 60k, then the cost difference in shipping is literally nothing.

Ouch, that sucks!