Confused? So was Chris Camillo, a “social arbitrage investor” and one of the hosts of a YouTube channel called “Dumb Money”. He said he had decided on the deal after watching the market for the Pokémon trading card game rocket in the last year and concluding that the appetite for nostalgic collectibles was not a bubble, but a serious new opportunity for long-term profit.
His confidence was helped in part by eye-watering purchases by celebrities such as the internet personality Logan Paul and rapper Logic, who paid $226,000 (£173,000) for a single card, a pristine 1999 “Charizard”, earlier this month.
The three sellers were led by Jake Greenbaum, a “blockchain entrepreneur” who uses the Twitter handle JBTheCryptoKing and was billed as Logan Paul’s “personal Pokémon consultant”. The group had themselves bought the box, which was meant to contain 36 unopened “booster” packs and a total of 396 cards, from an unnamed third party and flown to Dallas, Texas, to complete the deal.
They had asked to be paid in cash, Camillo said, and so a silver briefcase full of $100 bills sat on the table in front of the group during a live YouTube broadcast. The idea was to check on the contents, hand over the money, and sell the cards next year to benefit charity.
But a mood of anticipation as the box was opened quickly turned to bewilderment: at some point, the hoped-for rarities had been removed and replaced with filler sets that were commonplace, damaged, or otherwise worthless.
blog.psacard.com
