Armed with a golf club, the thief smashed his way into the Moonee Ponds store in the early hours of April 14 before filling a bag with more than $3000 worth of Pokemon cards and fleeing.

“As well as the value of the stock and the value of the damage, it’s a lot of time and effort and it plays on your mind,” store owner Lucas Hipkins said.

The burglary came about two months after police dismantled a organised crime syndicate allegedly involved in a series of robberies at collectible stores across Melbourne.

Four people were arrested and two of them were charged.

“Kind of figured it was just a matter of time before we got hit,” Hipkins said.

“I believe the the criminals that were doing the rounds a few months ago were targeting stores that sold individual cards that were of very high value, where the guy that came in here was just getting the sealed packets, so he may or may not have hit it big.”

Police have not linked the April 14 incident to the spree of break-ins earlier in the year.

But with the offender still on the run, they won’t rule it out of the investigation.

“It hurts, you know, we’re a very small business, we’ve got four stores, but we only have 10 staff and it’s primarily my wife and myself that … run the business, so it sort of feels, you know, almost personal I guess,” Hipkins said.