At the beginning of 2026, unsettling news emerged from Pokémon (Pocket Monsters) card collecting communities worldwide.
In Los Angeles, USA, a collector was robbed at gunpoint outside a card shop called RWT Collective, with approximately $300,000 worth of rare Pokémon cards stolen on the spot; around the same time, a collectibles store named Simi Sportscards in nearby Simi Valley was also burglarized, losing several high-value Pokémon cards.
Almost simultaneously, Hong Kong also experienced a series of card-snatching incidents targeting Pokémon cards. Within just two days, the MTR Lam Tin Station and Sha Tin Station witnessed cases where "arranged card meetings turned into robberies," with two victims losing a total of 26 authenticated cards worth nearly HKD 300,000. The cases were suspected to involve organized dual-line criminal operations.
Looking back slightly further, in 2025, Singapore police had disclosed that, since the latter half of the previous year, there had been hundreds of e-commerce fraud cases involving Pokémon cards within a few months, with total victim losses amounting to nearly a million Singapore dollars.
These incidents occurred in different regions, under different systems, and in different transaction scenarios, but they all point to the same issue:
As the value of physical collectibles continues to rise, and transaction methods still heavily rely on offline, human-mediated, and private trust, risks are being systematically amplified.
When Collectibles Are Financialized, the Infrastructure Has Not Kept Up
For a long time, Pokémon cards have been seen as carriers of interest, culture, or nostalgia, but recent market behavior clearly shows that they are also high-value, highly liquid, and transferable assets across regions.
The problem is that the transaction and circulation methods of such asset markets have not upgraded in sync with the changing nature of the assets.
Offline "face-to-face transactions" are still considered the most trustworthy method, yet they expose participants to personal safety risks; private card meetings, community transfers, and e-commerce private messages have become breeding grounds for fraud and robbery; the authenticity, grading status, and ownership changes of cards lack instant, verifiable public records; in case of loss, there is almost no cross-regional tracing or coordination mechanism.
Transaction modes that still widely exist in reality, including offline face-to-face meetings, private community arrangements, instant messaging app negotiations, and e-commerce private messages. These methods persist not because they are safer, but because the market has long lacked better alternatives. Once card values rise, these models become exposed to personal safety risks, fraud risks, and issues of ambiguous liability.
Once the value of a single card soars, personal safety risks, fraud risks, and liability ambiguity are no longer low-probability events.
In other words, the value of collectibles has been financialized, but the underlying transaction and risk management infrastructure remains in the pre-financial era.
From the Self-Help Measures of Offline Card Shops, Seeing the Structural Limitations of the Market
Following the recent spate of cases, physical card shops in different regions have begun to show similar reactive measures.
In Hong Kong, the well-known card shop MOONROAD announced it would formally implement a "Purchase and Recovery Application Form" system, requiring all buyback transactions to go through in-store form verification and process record confirmation to enhance transaction transparency and security.
After the Los Angeles incident in the US, the person in charge of the affected shop, RWT Collective, also stated they would install more CCTV cameras and discuss with property management the introduction of armed security measures within the shop and building premises.
The direction of these approaches is actually consistent: attempting to "frame" the risks back into a controllable scope through processes, spatial arrangements, and human resource investment.
However, they also clearly show limitations. Such measures can only be effective within a single shop or specific venue. Trust is still built on specific spaces and interpersonal relationships, making it difficult to meet the custody, verification, and circulation needs of card assets across cities and countries.
This is not a problem of individual card shops but a structural limitation faced by the entire physical collectibles market.
Card Tokenization is Happening, but "Attestation and Custody" Remain Key Hurdles
It is worth noting that in recent years, many "on-chain card packs" or "physical card NFTization" projects themed around Pokémon or other collectible cards have emerged in the market, attempting to address the transaction risks and liquidity constraints of the real world through Web3 technology.
Market data shows that the current transaction volume of the on-chain TCG market is approximately $630 million, accounting for about 8% of the global TCG market size; among them, the scale of tokenized Pokémon card-related assets is also about $150 million. The demand for tokenizing physical cards already exists and has been partially validated by real trading behavior.
More importantly, these numbers point to a broader trend: for high-value, cross-regionally transferable assets, physical entities are no longer the sole carriers of value transfer. Digital attestation and traceable ownership records are becoming the core of asset liquidity. Therefore, as the market gradually recognizes the advantages of on-chain cards in terms of transaction efficiency, circulation scope, and cost structure, this share is expected to continue growing.
However, the existence of a trend does not mean the problem has been solved. In most cases, so-called "physical asset NFTs" are essentially just an ERC-721 smart contract bound to a card number or image, claiming a 1:1 mapping, thus "on-chaining" the asset. Yet, the truly critical questions remain unanswered:
Has the card actually been received and custodied by a third party? Is the custody location verifiable? Is the liability clear? Can users find verifiable proof on the chain that corresponds to the real-world asset's condition?
If custody is a black box, and verification is not traceable, then所谓 "on-chaining" only solves the presentation form of the asset but does not truly address the asset's existence, liability, and risk in the real world.
This is why simply "minting physical cards into NFTs" is not sufficient to constitute a genuine institutional upgrade.
Why On-Chain Custody is Becoming a Practical Solution
If physical collectibles are to truly achieve cross-regional liquidity, the key is not just "representing cards as NFTs," but whether a structure can be established where transactions, custody, status, and liability are all verifiable. It is against this background that the market has begun to see practical paths attempting to solve the problem from the "infrastructure layer."
Taking Renaiss, the first project on BNB Chain focusing on TCG RWA, as an example, although it has maintained leading market热度 (heat/activity level) in on-chain card pack openings and secondary market trading since its launch nearly two months ago, its focus is not on the刺激 (stimulus/excitement) of on-chain pack trading or application-layer gameplay, but on establishing dedicated smart contract standards and a custody verification and circulation architecture for physical collectibles.
For each card, the minting of the NFT is not a unilateral action by the platform but must involve scanning, authentication, and signing by an approved third-party custodian or vault; the card corresponds not just to a number, but to an on-chain asset identifier, bound to the custodian entity, asset status, physical location, etc., forming a strong correlation between the on-chain state and the off-chain entity, avoiding disputes over authenticity and substitution. Cards are incorporated into a verifiable vault network, thus clarifying liability boundaries, while transactions and transfers are completed on-chain.
In such a structure, the chain is not just a transaction layer but a common record-keeping system for custody, verification, and settlement.
A card in Hong Kong doesn't necessarily have to be sold in Hong Kong; a collector in Los Angeles doesn't have to risk armed robbery to complete a transaction. The personal and logistical risks brought by repeated physical deliveries are thus transformed into institutional risks; and transactions and liquidity are no longer limited by city or geographical location.
Not Everyone Needs On-Chain Collecting, but the Market Definitely Needs On-Chain Order
The emergence of these robberies and frauds does not mean the collectibles market is receding. On the contrary, they often occur during the stages of most active liquidity and highest market recognition of value.
Not every collector will choose on-chain custody; nor must every transaction occur within a smart contract. But when robberies, frauds, and gray areas repeatedly appear, the market is actually reminding us: relying solely on "being more careful" and "trading with acquaintances" is no longer sufficient to support value流动 (flow/liquidity) of this scale.
From this perspective, the true value of on-chain custody lies not in creating more trading gimmicks, but in补上 (making up for) that long-missing layer of order for the physical collectibles market.
As collectibles enter the era of assetization, security, verification, and custody should no longer be risks borne solely by players, but should become an integral part of the market itself.
