Owner offers $70,000 reward for valuable sports cards stolen from Allen show
ALLEN — The owner of a valuable baseball card collection stolen from a trade show in Allen is now offering a $70,000 reward for their return or for information that leads to their return.
He says the collection the suspect walked away with is worth nearly $2 million and includes baseball cards for Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and other Hall of Fame players.
"We're aggressively investigating this incident," said Officer Sammy Rippamonti with the Allen Police Department. "We're using technology, fingerprints, facial recognition, anything we can."
According to the Allen Police Department, the theft happened Sunday at the Marriott Dallas Allen Hotel and Convention Center, where the Dallas Card Show is held several times a year.
On the last day of the event, the dealer who owns the cards says three men purposefully distracted his three employees while another man swiped the case of cards from behind their booth. He posted surveillance footage of the incident online in an attempt to identify the suspects.
"What we know at this time is it appears to be an organized group of individuals who came in right at kind of the end of the show," Rippamonti said.
Detectives are working to identify the people involved and track down the historic sports memorabilia. All the cards have serial numbers the owner has shared online.
"We're relying on the trading card community, they're a very close-knit community that works together on when things like this happen," said Rippamonti. "So we're kind of relying on them to come forward as well if they know something."
If that information leads to the return of the cards, they could get a $70,000 reward.
The Dallas Card Show will be back at the same location in September.
"In the future, we will start upping our staffing at the end of the show to make sure something like this doesn't happen again," Rippamonti said.
Anyone with information about what happened is encouraged to call Allen police at 214-509-4239.
The FBI confirmed Tuesday that it is working with Allen PD on the case.