The owner of a trading card shop in the east end of Toronto says he has lost thousands of dollars worth of products after a brazen morning break-in earlier in April.
“I’ve been not sleeping too well and just trying to figure out all the missing inventory, dealing with insurance, dealing with our security upgrades. It has been a lot of work. I lost like three or four kilograms,” Sunny Huang, the owner of Sunny Hobbies, told CityNews.
It was around 4:45 a.m. on April 20 when Huang said he received a mobile alert about a break-in happening at his Midland Avenue store, which was captured on surveillance cameras.
In a 46-second video shared with CityNews by Huang, three people can be seen entering through the store’s front door and rushing to the front showcase area. The individuals can then be seen ransacking shelves and smashing storecases before rushing out.
“We calculated about $36,000 worth of stuff,” he said while describing a detailed process of cataloguing and reporting losses.
Huang said he thinks he was targeted since the shop, which also serves as a community space for families and enthusiasts to meet and play cards, is located on the second floor of a commercial plaza with a lower-level entry that’s locked at night.
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He said he called the Toronto Police Service (TPS) just after the break-in and filed a report. CityNews contacted the service to ask about its probe into the incident, but investigators weren’t immediately available for an update.
In the days after the theft, Huang and his wife posted about their ordeal on social media. As a result of the posts, he said, people flagged suspicious trading card posts that offered sought-after cards at deep discounts. Huang estimated they have since recovered one-fifth to one-sixth of what was reported stolen.
Huang, who specializes in popular trading card games like Pokémon and works with card-grading companies for certification, said the incident hit hard after working for four years to build up his business. Due to the major product losses, he said he had to sell part of his collection to make sure the company had cash flow.
“After all the rent. utilities. staff pay. inventory management and subscription services to keep the systems running, insurance, it really dribbles down to like just single digits of actual margins,” Huang said.
CityNews recently reported on a number of robberies and thefts connected to trading cards throughout the Greater Toronto Area. A robbery and a break-in at two Peel region card shops happened within 24 hours of each other in mid-April. Toronto police officers also said a private seller of a high-end trading card, some of which can cost thousands of dollars, was robbed in a North York neighbourhood around the same time.
Randy Ngo is the manager of Cloud Games Trading Card Game Shop, which has a small retail office in York Region. He previously told CityNews he’s hearing about robberies involving various types of trading cards (Pokémon, Walt Disney, various sports) either locally or elsewhere in North America “almost every week.”
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Ngo said he used to be a Sunny Hobbies customer and heard about what happened.
“When I saw his post, it just broke my heart like [it has] a lot of people in the community. We’re just fed up with this,” he said while visiting Huang.
Joshua Dong, an online industry streamer under the name CatsPawTCG, also showed support.
“It’s nice to see more and more people come into the hobby, but then it draws the unwanted attention … that’s the worst part here,” he said.
Meanwhile, Huang said he’s working to implement new security features at the store, including measures to remove higher-value items at times. While encouraging others in the business to take similar precautions and continuing to share information, he praised the broader trading card game community.
“A lot of people reached out to send their good wishes. Overall, the community has been overwhelmingly supportive,” Huang said.