The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office is trying to figure out exactly when, where and how someone stole a literal ton of Nintendo Switch 2 consoles — nearly 3,000 in total— from a tractor-trailer passing through Colorado.
“I don't have any idea what somebody would do with 2,810 Nintendo Switches other than, obviously, try to sell them on the black market or something,” said Anders Nelson, spokesperson for the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.
While we dug into the story, we noticed a couple odd and interesting facts.
First, here’s what we know.
The truck driver called in the theft at 8:10 a.m. on June 8, with patrol deputies dispatched to a Love’s Travel Stop in Bennett to investigate. The truck stop is just off Interstate 70, about 30 miles east of downtown Denver.
The driver told deputies that he had discovered the break-in while he conducted a pre-trip inspection.
It’s unclear whether the thieves knew the truck contained Switch 2 consoles. Even the truck driver said he didn’t know what was in the trailer.
But, somehow, the thieves were able to extract “several pallets” of the consoles. With a weight of 1.18 pounds per console (excluding packaging), that’s a literal ton of Nintendos. That would indicate that whoever pulled off the theft was prepared to move a lot of merchandise
“Right now, our investigators are working on determining exactly when and where the theft actually occurred, whether or not it was in the town of Bennett or in one of the other cities that the truck had stopped in,” Nelson added.
Where were all those Nintendos heading?
We noticed an unusual line in the early reporting on the theft. According to the sheriff’s office, the truck driver said the consoles were en route from Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to a “GameStop store” in Grapevine, Texas.
That would be a lot of consoles for a single store. And when we called the store at Grapevine’s Mills Mall, an employee told us their most recent Switch 2 restock was just 29 units.
The employee pointed out a more plausible theory: The Texas city is also home to GameStop’s corporate headquarters and a central warehouse.
“That’s our corporate office and warehouse,” the employee said, declining to give their name because they aren’t authorized to speak to the media.
Asked for comment, GameStop ignored our specific questions and pointed to a pithy social-media post: “Come trade them in, we dare you.”
We did look on Craigslist for 2,810 Nintendos, but only found a few.
What’s a Switch 2 worth to Nintendo? Not $499.
During the investigation, ACSO heard an interesting tidbit from Nintendo.
Switch 2 consoles retail for at least $449.50, or $499.99 with the new Mario Kart. But Nintendo reported the consoles’ value at only $418.50
“The cost for Nintendo is $418.50,” said Nelson, the spokesperson for the sheriff’s office. “There's a difference in the retail value of what was stolen versus the cost to Nintendo of producing them
It’s unclear whether the $418.50 figure reflects the exact cost to produce each unit, their wholesale value or some other estimate of internal value.
Nintendo of America didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Denverite has requested records related to the investigation, but has not yet received them.
With the lower reported value, the loss to Nintendo would be about $1.2 million, not the $1.4 million initially reported.
The theft was reported a few days after the launch of the console, when demand was running especially high. The Switch 2 sold more than 3.5 million units in its first four days, one of the strongest debuts for a game console ever.
