Gretzky Theft: The LA Dodge

A funny story of a thief, sports merchandise, and Los Angeles depression!

Here's a fun consumerism-oriented fable inspired by Angels in the Outfield. 

----

====

The Wayne Gretzky LA Kings (NHL) card was suddenly skyrocketed in value during the Coronavirus quarantine, and everyone, sellers and buyers, wanted to find the best and cleanest edition online for net-purchasing. The best mint version of this NHL card was now worth over $1 million! However, it was a thief who'd end up keeping the valuable item.

The thief was Amlan Satan and was tracked by a collector's club hired security expert named Natasha. Natasha roamed around train stations and airports during the quarantine, convinced that Amlan was traveling rampantly during the quarantine to find the Gretzky mint-card and had perhaps tracked the item to Chicago.

Amlan, an Algerian-American, was an Ivy League graduate and computer wizard. He used his net-wizardry acumen to find the precise location where the Gretzky mint was floating around in the hands of cyber-merchants in the USA. It was indeed in Chicago, so Amlan placed a chat-bug online to dare the merchant to get the card to Los Angeles, where its value would spike because of homeground. Amlan then planned to infiltrate a special collector's meeting pretending to be a Kings clothing merchant.

After the merchants in the Kings collector's club meeting were drunken with wine, Amlan re-appeared disguised and costumed and claimed to be a pirate from the Caribbean and hoped to steal the Gretzky mint card and hype it on the Net as a trophy of new age pirate folklore! This was outlandish storytelling, but the drunken collector's bought the outrageous (and fictional) story.

Amlan then hyped the card online in a special series of anonymous blogs about the inflating value of cyber-dives surrounding Los Angeles and the activities surrounding sports merchandise marketing and its deep connection to American hospitality. This was fine modern dining,

However, two ex-girlfriends of Amlan, both college students he'd dated while rising in stardom for his wizardry with computers, exposed Amlan as a cyber-criminal. One disclosure culprit was his ex-girlfriend Fiona who claimed he knew nothing about ice-hockey!

The other culprit was ex-girlfriend Cameron who claimed he knew absolutely nothing about marketing/circulating sports cards. People believed these two scandal writers online. Suddenly, the Gretzky mint-card was back in demand, and no one wanted Amlan Satan to have the card...they wanted his girlfriends to have it instead!

AMLAN: I'm shocked by these allegations and proudly present my non-sports merchandise as trophies of capitalism too.

How this story panned out would impact the nature of sales of sports merchandise online on the Net during the quarantine. Was this a story of consumer dread...or capitalism direction? You decide!

====

"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)