Massive theft at Dallas card show, Nearly 2 Million Dollars worth of cards stolen

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Yoda

Perhaps this has been discussed before but this heist was well-planned, and I can't help but wonder if it was funded and organized by some rich collector with no desire to sell the cards but to gaze on his ill-gotten bonanza until he croaks.
If so the police need a break in the case, or I fear we may never see these jewels again.

I mentioned this previously, but this theory seems a bit far-fetched to me.

My first reason being that any rich collector would rather just buy these cards, rather than attempt to rip them off. Why would some rich collector risk serious jail time and potentially losing everything simply to pick up some additional cards on the cheap? Certainly the perps would roll over pretty quick if they were caught, and the mastermind ordering the hit would definitely go down with that ship.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, while this is certainly a valuable stack of cards, it would seem to be an odd grouping for a single rich collector to want all of them for their own collection. For example, there are a fistful of low to mid-grade 311 Mantles here. While most of us love a good 311 Mantle, my experience is that a rich collector would be more inclined to pick up a high grade copy, and even then, just one, rather than a fistful. Similar concepts come into play for the rest of the pieces here. While they're definitely valuable cards, they don't seem like the kind of pieces that your average rich collector is dying to add to their collection, just to have and hold for a few decades. Among other things, it strikes me that your rich collector, unless they're newer to the hobby, probably already has a lot of these pieces.

Now if the theft included about a bunch of impossible to find pieces, or really high for the grade pieces, then I would agree with you all day every day and twice on Sunday. But as great as this stuff is, it just doesn't scream to me that this is a theft that was made to order by some fat cat collector.