Catch ’em all: Police nab Adelaide Pokémon thief
A thief tried to steal thousands of dollars’ worth of Pokémon trading cards on Wednesday night.
An alleged Pokémon card thief has been caught and arrested by SA Police after a Happy Valley home was broken into at 11pm on Wednesday night.
A teenage girl, who was home alone, investigated noises from inside the house – when she found an unknown man inside the girl fled the scene and ran to a neighbour’s house to call police.
SAPOL officers arrived at the house to find Pokémon cards strewn across the front yard and found the suspect nearby who was allegedly in possession of a large quantity of Pokémon cards worth thousands of dollars that were stolen during the break-in.
A 39-year-old Tea Tree Gully man was arrested and charged with aggravated serious criminal trespass and theft. He was refused police bail and will appear in the Christies Beach Magistrates Court today.
SA Police reported that the teenage victim was emotionally shaken by the incident but was not physically injured.
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Pokémon trading cards prices vary widely from a few dollars for common cards to hundreds of thousands of dollars for rare and collectible pieces.
The most expensive card ever sold is a mint-condition Pikachu Illustrator card that sold for $16.492 million USD in February 2026, according to the Guinness World Records. The next most valuable was a 1996 Pikachu card that sold for $3.3 million USD in August.
The latest break-in comes amid a rise in Pokémon card thefts across Adelaide and Australia.
Last month, a man armed with a hammer broke into the Toymate store at Noarlunga Centre, on Beach Road, before allegedly smashing a glass cabinet and stealing a large quantity of Pokémon cards.
A 29-year-old Christies Beach man was charged with breaching a bail agreement, carrying an offensive weapon, property damage, theft and carrying an article of disguise
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