YouTuber Logan Paul has reportedly received a refund after it was revealed the Pokémon card collection he bought for $3.5 million was fake.
In December 2021, the YouTuber-turned-boxer purchased what he believed to be the ‘only known’ sealed box of first-edition Pokémon cards.
However, after sharing his buy on December 20 via social media, experts speculated over the authenticity of the cards.
In an unboxing posted onto YouTube, Paul later revealed the cards were, in fact, fakes, and not Pokémon Go cards at all. Instead of containing the one-of-a-kind first-edition Pokémon cards, the box that Paul unwrapped actually contained G.I. Joe trading cards instead.
Prior to the unboxing, the authenticity of the cards was warned as being unlikely by fansite Pokébeach and a fellow YouTuber named Rattle, Highsnobiety reports.
Such first edition Base Sets of Pokémon cards normally sell for over $400,000. If a ‘complete collection’ like Paul’s was verified as being real, they would be valued at over $2.6 million.
The box was first sold on eBay by a seller in Canada for $72,000, before being sold onto Paul for $3.5 million. The cards were then verified by an authentication service named Baseball Card Exchange (BBCE), however, it’s reported the service had little experience in Pokémon cards.
It’s also been claimed that the seller wasn’t offering potential buyers the opportunity to inspect the cards before making a deal.
In response to Paul getting ripped off, Pokébeach stated:
A note to Logan Paul: why do you keep consulting these uninformed individuals who don’t know anything about Pokémon.
The Pokémon TCG community has several members who have been here since the beginning who are passionate about the franchise and can help you… So feel free to contact us if you’re serious about collecting.
It has since been reported that the seller of the cards has refunded Paul.
A Twitter user shared a screenshot of the seller’s Instagram story, which stated how ‘grateful’ they were to the Pokémon community for ‘exposing this fraudulent case now before it transacted any further’.
They said:
I have reimbursed Logan his 3.5 however we will see how quickly I am made whole from the sellers who brought it to be already authenticated in the coming days or if it turns out into a drawn out scenario.
In Paul’s YouTube video reflecting on the fraud, one person can be heard commenting, ‘This is the biggest fraud in the entire history of Pokémon.’
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Topics: Celebrity, fraud, Logan Paul, YouTube
Credits
@MAVERICKxLPP/Twitter and 2 others@MAVERICKxLPP/Twitter
Highsnobiety
Logan Paul/YouTube
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