$1 million of PSA-graded trading cards stolen in FedEx heist

On Monday, Mashable reported on the burglary of a FedEx truck carrying packages of valuable trading cards, which had recently left a Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) facility in Southern California. PSA is a leader in grading valuable trading cards.

New details have since emerged about the theft, which indicate that this was a more sophisticated, targeted heist. We also now know just how valuable some of the stolen Pokémon and sports cards were.

According to a new report from the New York Times and The Athletic, the FedEx truck was parked outside of PSA’s headquarters in Santa Ana, California on Oct. 13. The Santa Ana Police told The Athletic that the FedEx truck was left unattended for as long as 90 minutes. During that window of time, the truck’s locks were broken, and three pallets of recently graded cards being sent back to their owners were stolen by the thieves, the police told the outlet. According to the report, two pallets held around 100 packages each, and a third contained roughly 50 packages.

PSA told police that two of the pallets were valued at around $963,000, The Athletic reported. The company is reportedly still assessing the value of the third pallet, but it seems likely the total value of the stolen cards will be more than $1 million.

The Santa Ana Police Department is currently investigating the crime.

“We are working closely with law enforcement and the carrier as the investigation continues,” PSA told Mashable in a statement on Monday. “We have deactivated the certificates for the stolen items and notified marketplace partners so they can be on the lookout for rare and serialized items.”

Online, affected PSA customers are sharing emails from PSA informing them of the theft, and some collectors are speculating about how the thieves knew to target that particular truck. The speculation isn’t unwarranted. There have been previous cases where delivery workers have been found guilty of stealing trading cards and other sports memorabilia while the items were in transit.

Collectors send their trading cards to PSA, or Professional Sports Authenticator, in order to get them graded. During this process, a professional authenticates the card as legitimate and also assesses the item’s condition, which could greatly boost its value to prospective buyers. 

According to PSA, the company will compensate customers for the stolen cards based on “fair market value up to the Maximum Insured Value.”

However, there are potential issues with how compensation will be assessed. One PSA customer, YouTuber Sky-B Cards, shared yesterday in a social media post that he had 104 cards stolen, worth more than $100,000. In a subsequent YouTube video, Sky-B Cards went through the list of cards that he had sent to PSA to be graded. As the YouTuber pointed out, some of these cards will be hard to calculate a reimbursement value for, as they included error cards, which usually sell at a premium when compared to the card’s estimated value.

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