Xiaoyang Card Club, a Pokemon card shop in Taipei’s Ximending area, allegedly halted operations without warning early on Aug. 3. According to the report, the shop’s three official LINE groups were deleted at around 3 a.m., its Instagram and Facebook accounts were shut down, and its storefront was found closed. More than 15,000 players were affected, and estimated losses tied to unfulfilled orders have reached NT$300 million. Wanhua Precinct has accepted complaints.
Three LINE groups disappeared at the same time
The report said Xiaoyang Card Club opened its physical store on Chengdu Road in Ximending in January this year. Its business included Japanese Pokemon Trading Card Game products, consignment sales, and submission services for third-party grading in the United States and Japan, including PSA. With a physical storefront and active LINE community operations, the shop quickly gained visibility in Taiwan’s card-collecting market and built three official LINE groups, each capped at 5,000 members.
At around 3 a.m. on Aug. 3, all three LINE groups reportedly turned into unusable chatrooms. Its Instagram and Facebook pages also went offline. Players then began posting accounts of their losses on Threads, while a separate self-help group was formed overnight. That group grew from several hundred members in the early hours to more than 3,800 people.
Some users also said footage had circulated showing the shop’s person in charge, surnamed Zheng, leaving through Taoyuan Airport on July 30.
Losses involve pre-orders, consignment items and grading submissions
The reported losses cover several categories: Pokemon cards that were pre-ordered but never delivered, high-value collectibles left at the shop on consignment pending sale, and cards that had already been submitted and were still waiting for overseas grading.
Individual losses cited in the report ranged from NT$7,200 for newer buyers to hundreds of thousands of Taiwan dollars for VIP members. One player wrote on Threads, “The first time I bought from a physical store, I got scammed. I thought having a storefront meant it was safer, but they ran off in the middle of the night.”
Players said discount campaigns appeared in the weeks before the shutdown
According to the report, multiple players and people in the trade said the shop had rolled out a series of aggressive promotions in the weeks before the incident. Those included discounted pre-orders for sought-after products such as Rayquaza items and Pokemon 30th anniversary merchandise, drawing in a large number of paid orders.
The report compared that pattern — building trust through low-price offers before an apparent final sweep — to a rug pull, a scam structure often discussed in crypto and described in Chinese as “yang tao sha.”
The article also noted that trading card games, or TCGs, have increasingly moved beyond hobby collecting into the realm of alternative assets. It referenced an earlier report about a rare Pokemon card selling for NT$517 million, which it said prompted the Japanese government to form a cross-party lawmakers’ alliance to study oversight around counterfeit cards, hoarding and money laundering. In that context, the report said the high value and liquidity of the card market led some players to entrust shops with collections worth hundreds of thousands or even more than NT$1 million. Consignment, proxy purchasing and grading submission services all rely on trust, and if a shop shuts down maliciously, customers may face a total loss on physical assets left in custody.
Consumer protection and police response
Lin Chuan-chien, director-level consumer protection officer at Taipei’s Department of Legal Affairs, sent staff on the morning of Aug. 3 to inspect the company’s registered address. The site was closed, with no one answering.
Lin said that as of 10:40 a.m. that day, the Taipei City Government had not yet received formal consumer complaints. Still, if a business ceases operations without notice, that would constitute non-performance of debt obligations, and consumers would have the right to demand the return of payments already made and seek compensation for damages.
The department has notified the criminal investigation division of the police to determine whether fraud may be involved. Wanhua Precinct confirmed it has accepted multiple reports and will notify the person in charge, surnamed Zheng, to appear and explain. The final number of affected customers and the total amount involved are still being counted.
A social media user identifying as a former Xiaoyang Card Club employee also said they had handled only customer service and community operations, had no access to fund flows, and only discovered on Aug. 3 that they could no longer reach the person in charge. The post added that wages for July had still not been paid and said, “I am also one of the people affected by this incident.”
A physical storefront did not eliminate custody risk
The line “I thought having a physical store meant it was safe” appeared repeatedly in posts from affected players, and the report framed that idea as one of the core tensions exposed by the case.
It drew a parallel with crypto custody failures. In digital assets, collapses at centralized platforms have made “not your keys, not your coins” a basic warning. In the physical card market, handing high-value collectibles to a shop for storage or processing raises a similar custody and trust issue.
The report added that as collectible card assets take on a bigger role in portfolio allocation, the question of how to build credible third-party custody, appraisal and trading mechanisms is moving beyond collector circles into the domain of regulation and consumer protection. Consumer protection officials urged affected players to keep four types of evidence: proof of purchase, payment records, chat screenshots and pre-order documents, to support later claims.