Logan Paul loses $3.5 million on a fake case of Pokemon cards

Logan Paul's $3.5 million case of first-edition Pokemon cards is fake. In fact, it was filled with packs of G.I. Joe cards.

"G.I. Joe, bro? They could have been anything else!" Paul said upon opening the suspicious boxes and revealing their heartbreaking content.

Back in December of 2021, Paul shocked his audience by purchasing a sealed case of first-edition boxes of Pokemon booster packs. At the time, the YouTube star said it was the "only" sealed case of its kind, which the Pokemon TCG community proved to be false.

The Pokemon TCG also speculated around that time that the purchase was fake. The case of base set Pokemon boxes first appeared on eBay in Canada in March of 2021. The seller was very suspicious, according to Pokebeach, who noted they had no feedback and the listing had an abundance of grammatical issues.

At this point, serious Pokemon TCG collectors and players decided it was best not to bid. It was too much money to spend on something that couldn't be trusted. The seller wouldn't even let people inspect the case before making a purchase on what was considered to be worth $2.6 million.

Due to low competition, the box sold for just $72,000. The buyer then sold it to another collector for $2.7 million. That collector got it authenticated and sold it to Paul. But it seems that the company responsible for the authentication of the case was unfortunately very mistaken.

"According to them, an authentication company named Baseball Card Exchange was present to authenticate the box. While their company has a significant presence and experience in the world of sports collectibles, their reputation is non-existent in the Pokemon community when it comes to authenticating anything other than individual booster packs. Nevertheless, they stated the box was real and then wrapped it in their company’s shrink wrap," Pokebeach wrote.

The Pokemon website then asked Logan directly why he keeps trusting "uninformed individuals" who are not experts in Pokemon cards.

Due to the ongoing controversy surrounding the case, Paul decided to open it despite it losing value from being tampered with in this way.

In his video showing the tense moments leading up to the unboxing, an authenticator can be seen saying that the tape sealing up the box looked "aged." Everyone in the room was nervous, stating that they hoped the case ended up being real. But upon opening the case, the boxes immediately looked suspicious.

The group decided to open a case just to confirm their suspicions. That's when the squad came face to face with... G.I. Joe cards.

Logan Paul made no effort to pretend to be amused or find anything positive about the situation. In fact the social media personality looked genuinely distraught. However, the Pokemon community felt he had it coming.

While many in the Pokemon TCG space blame Paul and other influencers for spiking up card prices with fake hype from untrusted sources, some pointed out that this case being fake is not just bad for Logan Paul. The community is impacted by this as well since other collectors have gone through the same authentication company and now must reconsider their own card collections.

Still, it's good to have some fake product off the market.