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PSA graded baseball cards
There’s always been a big market for trading cards, but it’s become an increasingly lucrative one in recent years. Professional Sports Authenticator, a.k.a. PSA, is widely considered the gold standard when it comes to the companies that specialize in evaluating the quality of those collectibles, but it’s landed at the center of a heist after being targeted by thieves who made off with a massive haul.
Baseball was the pastime that was primarily responsible for spawning the trading cards that were initially produced by cigarette and candy companies before creating an industry that turned its attention to other sports.
Some of the rarest sports cards can sell for millions of dollars, and that’s also the case with ones printed for games like Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering, which collectively serve as the foundation for a booming industry that’s projected to have an annual market value of nearly $25 billion by the end of the decade.
Not all cards are created equal, and while scarcity tends to be the biggest factor in the prices they fetch, quality is also a key component.
There are a number of companies that focus on assessing the various aspects that are taken into consideration, and none of them are bigger than PSA, which graded close to 20 million cards on a scale of 1 to 10 in 2025 and was responsible for 72% of the market share.
Fans who submit their cards for grading are taking a bit of a leap of faith when they mail them off to PSA, and we’ve been treated to a reminder about the potential downsides of doing so after hundreds of collectibles vanished into thin air in California.
Thieves stole more than 200 cards from a FedEx truck outside a PSA grading facility in California
Most people who pay to have their cards graded by PSA mail them to the company, which can be a somewhat risky endeavor due to the possibility of things taking a turn for the worse while they’re in transit.
According to The Athletic, that was the case for a number of customers who fell victim to a theft that recently transpired outside PSA headquarters in Santa Ana, California, as police say a FedEx truck was targeted in a heist that led to the disappearance of more than 200 packages containing graded cards that were slated to be shipped back to their owners.
A total of three pallets were stolen, and the contents of two of them were valued at $963,000. No number has been released for the third, but it seemed very safe to assume the overall total will end up being well north of $1 million.
A collector who goes by SKY-B Cards online appears to be one of the biggest victims, as he revealed he was informed that 104 of his cards (which were worth over $100,000) had gone missing over the weekend before releasing a video detailing the situation.
“We will compensate you for the items from your order that were involved, which is based on fair market value up to the Maximum Insured Value (“MIV”) you selected for each item.”
@natsturner, I pray you handle this and take care of everyone affected in the most professional manner possible. I have an awful feeling PSA is going to be extremely unfair on what the values of these cards are.
— SKY-B (@SKYBCards) October 17, 2026
He said he received an email where PSA offered to compensate him based on the “fair market value” of the cards, and he and other collectors have expressed concerns with the offers they’ve gotten while sharing the messages they received.
PSAs offer to one FedEx victim … and his response https://t.co/TKTxPhZALH
— Boston Card Hunter (@BosCardHunter) October 19, 2026
Collectors, the parent company of PSA, released a statement in which it confirmed the theft and noted it had “deactivated the certificates for the stolen items” while alerting its partners to be on the lookout for people attempting to flip them.
FedEx added it is “working with local law enforcement” during an ongoing investigation into the incident, which reportedly involved a truck with a broken lock that was left unattended for between an hour and 90 minutes.
There’s obviously a chance the police manage to track the cards down, but it appears PSA is going to have a pretty messy situation on its hands if that doesn’t end up being the case.