“Ooh, the colour’s different on that one and that one,” someone said. The idea was to check on the contents, hand over the money, and sell the cards next year to benefit charity.īut a mood of anticipation as the box was opened quickly turned to bewilderment: at some point, the hoped-for rarities had been removed and replaced with filler sets that were commonplace, damaged, or otherwise worthless. They had asked to be paid in cash, Camillo said, and so a silver briefcase full of $100 bills sat on the table in front of the group during a live YouTube broadcast. The group had themselves bought the box, which was meant to contain 36 unopened “booster” packs and a total of 396 cards, from an unnamed third party and flown to Dallas, Texas, to complete the deal. The three sellers were led by Jake Greenbaum, a “blockchain entrepreneur” who uses the Twitter handle JBTheCryptoKing and was billed as Logan Paul’s “personal Pokémon consultant”.

His confidence was helped in part by eye-watering purchases by celebrities such as the internet personality Logan Paul and rapper Logic, who paid $226,000 (£173,000) for a single card, a pristine 1999 “Charizard”, earlier this month.

Pokemon ex in every pack