Rare Charizard card worth £30,000 returned to rightful owner after alleged thief tried selling it on Facebook

A Pokemon tragedy has just turned into a successful rescue mission as British police retrieved a Charizard card worth £30,000 after it was kidnapped from its home in Essex. 

According to the BBC, a 23-year-old man allegedly stole the card from its owner in early September. The Charizard card might have been lost to time after that, if only its apparent thief hadn't tried selling it on Facebook. Police found the listing, issued a search order on an address in East Sussex, and managed to find the rare card there. 

The abducted card in question appears to be a holographic Charizard from Pokemon TCG's Base Set, though many holographic Charizard cards are valuable. Some sellers indeed price mint condition versions of a Base Set Charizard at around $40,000, or approximately £31,000, but card grader PSA's price history also indicates that Charizard's value drops off steeply based on the state it's in. A slightly less mint, or MT 9, holographic Charizard is worth around $1,200, for example. 

In any case, these cards are too substantial to spend their lives rotting on Facebook the way humans without any Fire/Flying type ability do. It's good that the expensive Charizard finally made its way to safety; police constable Alan Russell told the BBC that it "was a valuable item which meant a lot to the victim," and now they can rest easy. The alleged thief apparently received a caution after admitting to stealing the Charizard card.

With over 99 million copies sold on the Switch alone, Nintendo says Pokemon has "found a new home on Nintendo Switch."