$300,000 worth of MTG cards stolen from Gen Con 2023 have been recovered

The palette full of expensive Magic: The Gathering cards pilfered from Gen Con 2023 have been successfully recovered, according to Indianapolis local news affiliate WTHR. Indianapolis police expect to press charges soon against the thieves who nicked approximately $300,000 worth of cardboard from the convention floor.

Two board game designers, Thomas J. Dunbar and Andrew Pearson Giaume, have been identified by police as persons of interest in the alleged theft that occurred on August 2st, one day before Gen Con 2023 was set to begin. A tweet from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department on August 10th specifically asks Dunbar and Giaume to come speak with detectives. By August 17th, the police claimed the case had been sent to the prosecutor’s office, and the designers’ attorneys had been notified.

The cards were removed from the loading and staging area of the Indianapolis Convention Center via a pallet jack (pallet truck for those in the UK). Security footage shows a pair of thieves casually walking the boxes of MTG cards across the convention center’s halls and into a parking garage before returning with the now-empty jack.

The boxes contained booster packs and the more expensive collector boosters for MTG’s Commander Masters set, which sold for radically inflated prices at the time of the theft and still fetch more than usual set releases due to the high-value of card reprints contained within.

It has not yet been revealed where the stolen cards were taken after leaving the convention center, by New York State Police reportedly assisted in recovery. IMPD expects charges will be filed soon with the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office - Dicebreaker has reached out for more information regarding those charges.

While not related to the alleged theft, users on BoardGameGeek sought their own brand of justice by review-bombing Dunbar and Giaume’s board game, Castle Assault, which they were showcasing at Gen Con 2023. “No comment needed,” reads one commenter who awarded the title with a 1 on BGG’s 10-point scale. “THIEVES! Rating low to signal that the hotness placement is not because of the game’s quality or legitimate hype/anticipation. The publisher/designers are literal thieves,” someone else said.

Others took it upon themselves to counteract the flood of reactionary judgments by rating Castle Assault as high as possible. “It's my understanding that the designers acted independently of the publisher. Why kill the publisher, game and all the work they did to create this product?” one user wrote. Another had a less nuanced opinion: “props for unique game promotion.”