UPDATED 1/13, 4:15 p.m. ET: Logan Paul’s unopened set of first edition Pokémon cards was actually filled with G.I. Joe cards.
The reveal, which you can watch below, happened when Paul and card collector Bolillo Lajan San convened with the Baseball Card Exchange in Chicago and opened the box on camera.
“Oh my God, bro,” he yells. “G.I. JOE?? G.I. JOE?!?! It could have been anything else.”
“This is the biggest fraud in the entire history of Pokémon,” an authenticator adds.
“I’m a super positive person, bro,” Paul goes on to say. “And, I’ll always be the one to look at the bright side, and I am trying, but this is very hard.”
See original story below.
Logan Paul may have been fleeced out of millions of dollars.
The polarizing YouTuber took to Twitter last month to announce he had dropped $3.5 million on a set of highly coveted first edition Pokémon cards. Paul showed off the “sealed and authenticated box,” which he believed to be one-of-a-kind; however, a number of collectors and Pokémon experts immediately questioned the cards’ authenticity.
Online community PokéBeach conducted a thorough investigation on Paul’s card set and noted a number of suspicious details. The red flags included inconsistencies with the product code, the tape used on the box, as well as the original eBay listing for the set.
The Base Set case first appeared on Canada’s eBay site on March 29th, 2021. Fans could place their bids for 10 days. The seller “number1pokemonmaster“ had almost no feedback and their listing was riddled with significant grammar errors. The seller also changed their username right before the auction went live, as if to hide their history.
On Wednesday, Paul returned to Twitter claiming he was traveling to Chicago this weekend to get the case verified by Baseball Card Exchange, the company that previously confirmed its authenticity. But, as PokéBeach points out, BCE isn’t known for authenticating Pokémon cards.
Stay tuned to see how the story unfolds.
