Oh boy, Logan Paul. I’m sure I can’t be the only one who thought his very enthusiastic bombardment on the Pokémon Trading Card Game would be a passing phase, but alas, it continues.
His involvement in the community began back in September 2020, and while we can all agree that’s definitely not the worst thing to come out of that cursed year, it’s certainly made an impact on the prices and demand for Pokémon cards, as he basically introduced a huge audience to the idea that cards could be an investment of sorts, with the high values that some go for when resold.
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Well, investments always have the potential to go wrong, and it would seem there’s a decent chance that the YouTuber’s most recent purchase might have. Back on 20 December, Paul took to Twitter to post a picture of an apparently sealed and authenticated case of first edition Base Set cards, which he spent $3.5 million dollars on. That’s some expensive cardboard.
However, collectors have been sceptical about the the legitimacy of the cards, with many strongly believing Paul may have been massively scammed. One user over on the TCG fansite PokéBeach, who goes by Water Pokémon Master, claims that the case of cards first appeared online on 29 March 2021, when it was sold for way under what you’d expect. $72,500 might not sound like a steal of a price, but individual Base Set boxes had been selling for more than $430K each, so the whole case should have been going for a minimum of $2.6 million. The highest bidder ended up bailing from the sale when the seller didn’t allow them to inspect the box before buying, which is obviously a huge red flag.
The user also detailed a number of other points, from the barcode to the tape around the box, which all indicate that there’s something amiss with Paul’s supposed ‘one of a kind’ case (which by the way, it isn’t - collector Gary Haase owns a real one). So, the question remains, what’s actually in the box? Potentially the world’s most expensive paperweights, that is for sure.
It wouldn’t be the first time that the YouTuber has been caught up in a TCG scam - in October 2020 he spent $150K on a fake Pikachu Illustrator card, which should have been worth about $2 million dollars if it was real. He got so angry about this that he punched a window and ended up in hospital, so considering he’s spent significantly more money this time, we’ll just have to hope he isn’t in the vicinity of any windows if the cards do turn out to be fake.
Featured Image Credit: Logan Paul via Twitter, The Pokémon Company