Logan Paul had a major and very public loss recently after buying what he was told was an authentic, first-edition base set of Pokémon cards.
He worked through and alongside many people he trusted to judge the value and validity of the case, but wound up scammed, posting it all online so the world could follow his journey towards losing $3.5 million.
And he lost, hard.
After boasting a $3.5 million purchase on what he believed was a sealed box of first-edition base set Pokémon cards back in December of 2021, he recently opened them just to discover that he'd been had.
Among them was Pokémon site Pokébeach and fellow a YouTuber named Rattle, of whom a clip is featured in Paul's reveal video.
There were a few reasons why they thought the box to be inauthentic, starting with the doubt that so many cards would go to market at the same time based on past trends.
The box was first sold by an eBay vendor based in Canada for $72,000 before it made its way to Paul for $3.5 million. The original eBay account was pretty questionable, Pokébeach and Rattle found out, with no sale history or reviews to speak of.
Buyers were not permitted to inspect the cards before purchase, and the listing was riddled with grammatical errors, both major red flags.
He did use an authentication service called Baseball Card Exchange to verify the package, a service he's reportedly used and trusted before, but some were saying they have little experience with Pokémon cards, which was another worry in the long line of concerns onlookers had with the purchase.
Featured in the video is a man named Matt, or @shyne150 on Instagram, a sports card collector who had initially bought the case of Pokémon cards for $2.7 million from the Canadian vendor before selling them to Paul for even more. The two had since become friends, and Paul claims he could trust Matt to refund him if things went wrong.
They go over what makes it seem authentic and un-tampered with before finally breaking it open.
There are immediate concerns with how the individual boxes look, and they compare it to the real boxes Paul already owns. They all know they're fake right away.
They decide to cut open one of the boxes anyway and inside find packs upon packs of not Pokémon cards, but G.I. Joe trading cards.
Paul is devastated by the news and spends the rest of the video lamenting his loss.
Paul was right to place his trust in Matt regarding a refund, as Matt posted an Instagram story saying the full $3.5 million had been returned.
One of the men in the video called this the "biggest fraud in the entire history of Pokémon."
In it, they say, "A note to Logan Paul: why do you keep consulting these uninformed individuals who don’t know anything about Pokemon? [...]
The Pokemon TCG community has several members who have been here since the beginning — through Pokemon’s highs and lows — who are passionate about the franchise and can help you (or at least lead you in the right direction) [...] So feel free to contact us if you’re serious about collecting!"
h/t: LadBible
