Hey, at least they saved a ton on shipping.
Marcus, didn't you have insurance? I'm sure it would cover the loss. Sorry to hear about it, BTW. Thieves suck ass. Well, non-TSR ones do.

Titan Games Owner wrote:

Deadlord39 wrote:Hey, at least they saved a ton on shipping.
Marcus, didn't you have insurance? I'm sure it would cover the loss. Sorry to hear about it, BTW. Thieves suck ass. Well, non-TSR ones do.

Our insurance has a high deductable, and my losses would be covered only after meeting that deductable, and then only for the price paid on items.  My loss of nearly $14K by current numbers as the ladies here add up the missing stuff, is for our prices, not for what we paid for it.

Sadly, we turn our DVDs about once a month or so, and our Video Games about twice a month, so the losses to us are HUGE as this represents 75% of our fastest moving merchandise.

Crap!

    Sorry to hear about it, that's the trick of insurance.  You can claim and then get hosed by having the deductable taken out then probably having your insurance cancelled in quick order; or not claim then what's the purpose of having insurance.
    Most times, like you said, insurance wouldn't even cover the true worth.  
    Also, Marcus, I'm sure you've thought of this but wouldn't the thief have a very limited market to dispose of his stolen items?  Used bookstores/gamestores in the area or ebay are the only two venues that make any sense for such a large amount of speciality items like gaming supplies.  If you haven't already, although you probably have, you might call the owners of such establishments in the area and let them know to call you if a suspiciously large sale comes through. I know that Half Price books has a policy that if you can prove they have your stolen merchandise, you can buy it back at the cost they paid for it (I had a friend who got his stolen cd collection back in this method).  A police report is all that is needed in most cases; after all, that is stolen merchandise and it is illegal to resell if the store knows it is, which they will if you notify them. Good Luck.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:call you if a suspiciously large sale comes through. I know that Half Price books has a policy that if you can prove they have your stolen merchandise, you can buy it back at the cost they paid for it (I had a friend who got his stolen cd collection back in this method).

Hmm.. why would you need to buy back you own goods? if you can prove that they were yours and were stolen as far as I'm concerned they still are yours, the business should have insurance that covers this.. ?? how does this work??  and you say its illegal to sell if they know its stolen so they can't otherwise dispose of the goods???

Brette:)

If you can ID some rare or unique items, we would all be happy to keep a lookout for them.

I am really sorry to hear about the breakin.  Now that Titan Games has a human face on the Acaeum, I doubt you'll hear many guffaws.

 When our local game store was robbed the thief was eventually caught because he came back to rob again.

  Get a line into the region's pawn shops.  That seems a likely place for a lot of the items to appear.

  Really sorry....

Mark   

beasterbrook wrote:

Badmike wrote:call you if a suspiciously large sale comes through. I know that Half Price books has a policy that if you can prove they have your stolen merchandise, you can buy it back at the cost they paid for it (I had a friend who got his stolen cd collection back in this method).

Hmm.. why would you need to buy back you own goods? if you can prove that they were yours and were stolen as far as I'm concerned they still are yours, the business should have insurance that covers this.. ?? how does this work??  and you say its illegal to sell if they know its stolen so they can't otherwise dispose of the goods???

Brette:)

Brette;

    The way it was explained to me by a HPB employee (now, this may no longer be their policy, this happened several years ago), they let you buy back your goods at the price they bought them at as a courtesy (which, if you know anything about HPB, is a pittance...my friend bought back his set of several hundred cds for like $50).  In most cases, you cannot identify the exact item as the items are not itemized....you may put  on the police report something like "200 cds" but you are not going to list them by group and title (unless you keep an extremely sophisticated database).  HPB has no way of knowing that the guy who dumped 300 cds to them is #1 The guy that stole the items (since rarely are thieves like this caught, much less convicted) #2 The cds are the ones in question (maybe he mixed some of his own, or another 100 cds from the other five guys he ripped off, into the booty) #3 You aren't just scamming them by filling out a false police report after seeing some guy drop a giant collection at HPB and then walking in the next day saying "Hey, those are my cds from a giant collection stolen from me just yesterday".
  If the last one sounds farfetched, according to my sources in HPB who worked there, that scenario happened just at their one store at least twice...one time it was two roommates who basically needed cash, one brought in about 250 cds one day and got about $100, the other came back the next day with a police report saying his car was broken into and all his cds were stolen, he was allowed to buy back his cds, only later did they realize both the thief and buyer both had different names but the same address (doh!!!).  They later busted the guys as they tried to pull the scam at another HPB about a year later....Another time apparantly a thief had connections with a HPB employee; whenver a large collection would come through (several hundred cds or dvds) this HPB employee would call his friend and tell him the general titles and such in the collection; the next day his accomplice would wander in and say he was ripped off and they stole a bunch of cds and dvds, here are some of the titles, sure enough guess what those titles were part of a large buy the other day.....if I remember correctly this scam got pulled a few times and finally the HPB employee was let go and the accomplice was warned not to come back into any of the HPB stores.
  In the USA especially a large city, this crime is virtually not investigated at all, the police are frankly in the search for bigger fish, there is little enforcement so the thieves are never caught even if their names are known.  I saw just the other day in the newspaper that a construction site down the street had over 30k worth of supplies boosted, so the local police department is not going to assign anyone a case of 300 missing cds when high dollars thefts like the construction site robbery go on everyday.
  In the case of rare books/gaming supplies, I think most thieves who didnt' understand what they had would just trundle down to the local HPB or used bookstore and try to get whatever they could for them.  If they were just a tiny bit more sophisticated or less desperate for cash or less stupid, they would either sit on the stock awhile and sell it piecemeal, go on ebay and slowly sell it, or go out of town to sell it at another bookstore say 100 miles away.  In any case, guys like Marcus are completely on their own because there will be no thorough investigation, the police might arrest the guys if they virtually fell right into their lap.
  As a small example, a few years ago a ring of luggage thieves was busted in the area that had been operating for about a decade.  They would have accomplices stake out DFW airport and when baggage wasn't picked up, they would claim it and take it to a warehouse.  There they opened it and sorted through the items. They operated a stand at a flea market nearby, and they would sell evrything (includng the luggage of course).  They did this many, many years until they were caught by sheer stupidity and brazenness.  Their take over the decade was figued at a couple of MILLION dollars.  The ONLY reason they got caught was the sheer volume of luggage they began stealing and the hand over fist money they were making at the flea market.  

Mike B.

Xaxaxe wrote:

Badmike wrote:Also, Marcus, I'm sure you've thought of this but wouldn't the thief have a very limited market to dispose of his stolen items?  Used bookstores/gamestores in the area or ebay are the only two venues that make any sense for such a large amount of speciality items like gaming supplies.

Which is sort of similar to my first thought: these sorts of morons almost always get caught after shooting their mouths off to their buddies, or in a bar, or something similar. So you might want to have everyone affiliated with Titan keep their antennae up for any rumors of loose-lipped braggarts in your area.

Two of my buddies are in law enforcement, and they consistently say that people would be amazed by how stupid most criminals are. In fact, they depend on these idiots to act like ... well, idiots ... and freely admit that if the average criminal just used his head, they would hardly ever be able to solve a crime.

Amen.

mbassoc2003 wrote:That reminds me about a book I was reading on Karma.....

I am glad you said it, I was thinking it

Would that be the same Dungeondad from eBay? They're coming out of the woodwork now.