Pete Hoefling Jr. is very experienced at the popular trading card game called Magic: The Gathering.

Unfortunately, all the creature cards and spell cards in the world could not protect him from his latest opponents: thieves and insurance companies.

When Hoefling's Williamson Road game store was burglarized a year ago, a quantity of the trading cards were stolen. After months of working with his insurer, Auto-Owners Insurance Co., Hoefling filed a lawsuit against it in Roanoke County Circuit Court on Nov. 12.

He said he thinks the payment he has received is incomplete, and said Auto-Owners does not understand the value of the cards.

"I know you can't just blindly write people checks," Hoefling said, "but I never imagined we'd be put through what we have."

Ginny McKay, a spokeswoman for Auto-Owners, said that she cannot comment on an open and ongoing lawsuit.

Magic: The Gathering was introduced in 1993 by a small company called Wizards of the Coast. It has grown to intrigue more than 6 million players worldwide.

"It's the biggest mainstream game that many people have not heard of," Hoefling said.

Each player builds his or her own individual deck of cards to play against other players. The object of the game is to kill one's opponent before being killed.

Because Wizards releases several new sets of cards each year, there are thousands of different cards in existence. Players and collectors continue to seek the cards, and some of the rarest and most powerful cards sell for hundreds of dollars, sometimes more than $1,000.

It is the secondary market that keeps Hoefling and his employees busy. He estimates that Star City Comics and Games operates the largest mail-order company in the world specializing in Magic cards. It has upwards of 3 million cards sorted and categorized, he said.

Before the burglary, all of the cards were stocked in the basement warehouse at 5623 Williamson Road N.W. Afterward, Hoefling said, he changed many security measures and does not keep the most valuable cards on site anymore.

Roanoke County Police Lt. Chuck Mason said someone broke into the store between midnight Dec. 19 and 10 a.m. Dec. 20. Nothing was stolen upstairs, but Hoefling discovered that many Magic cards were taken from the warehouse. No arrest has been made, and none of the stolen cards has been recovered.

"We immediately went through our inventory and figured out what was missing," Hoefling said.

His wife, Crystal Hoefling, said they were "ridiculously honest" when they made their insurance claim. If they had any doubt that a card was missing, they did not include it in their loss.

Knowing that Auto-Owners had likely never handled such a claim, the couple put the company in touch with one of the world's leading experts on Magic cards. The man, who lives in Kentucky, provided a price list that was just slightly higher than what the Hoeflings had estimated.

The value of the cards at cost, or the price that Star City paid for the cards, was at least $34,363, according to the lawsuit. The problem, Hoefling said, is that the stolen cards are worth much more today than they were when they were purchased. In addition, some of the stolen cards were so rare that they are virtually irreplaceable.

The Hoeflings estimate that the actual value of the cards is closer to $67,800.

Auto-Owners sent some auditors to Star City to evaluate the loss. Hoefling said the auditors went through the store, checked the books and asked questions.

He estimates that the insurance company called three or four times with different questions. Each time, it took the store owners about a day's work to gather the information.

"I would say that one of our contentions with the suit itself is that the insurer never understood what it was they were insuring," Hoefling said.

After the initial payment of $19,750 from the insurance company, Star City has not received any more. The store is suing for breach of contract and failure to act in good faith.

The Hoeflings say they hope to receive what they believe to be the actual cash value of the stolen cards, less the payment already made by Auto-Owners - about $48,000.