Magic: The Gathering cards worth an estimated $US300,000 were stolen from Pastimes, an Indiana gaming company, last week during Gen Con in Indianapolis—one of the largest gaming conventions in the world. Zack Reiter, a manager at Pastimes, confirmed via email to io9 that it was his store that was affected by the theft. WRTV, a local news station, ran the initial story.
While rumors were that Lorcana might have fallen victim to thievery (especially considering the demand at Gen Con and on eBay), Lorcana publisher Ravensburger acted fast and tweeted that all its product was accounted for. In an email exchange, Reiter said that the theft was “immediately obvious… It’s not a quantity that could go unnoticed.” Pastimes intended to use the product to run games and give out as prizes and it had to “scramble” to figure out how to replace everything in the interim.
For Pastimes, Gen Con was “stressful but great!” Reiter said he’s feeling “a mixture of frustration about the the missing product, relief that we were still able to run tournaments, and the usual fatigue.” Additionally, Reiter wanted to express that “the community has been amazing. After the initial news reports, a ton of people expressed their concern and tried to help out including players, friends, and other companies.”
Reiter also said that Pastimes is in contact with Wizards of the Coast following the theft. Considering what we’ve learned about how Wizards of the Coast has tracked down stolen products in the past, there might be some very scary people after the two suspects in this case.
According to WRTV, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said that suspects “allegedly used a pallet jack to remove a pallet of gaming cards and took them to an unknown location.”
io9 has reached out to Magic: The Gathering for a comment. We will update this story if we receive an answer.