Thieves take two pallets of PSA cards from a FedEx truck at its headquarters

On 13 October, Santa Ana police were called to PSA's headquarters in the 1600 block of E. St. Andrew after a theft from a FedEx truck, CBS LA reported. Two pallets of sports and Pokémon cards were taken and a third was disrupted. Police said the estimated value at the time was $963,000, and that the exact figure could not be set until the remaining boxes were scanned. No arrests had been reported and nothing had been recovered.

One collector, Skyler of SKY-B Cards, told CBS LA he lost an order of over 100 graded cards valued at more than $100,000. Cardlines reported that individual loss claims have not been independently verified.

What it changes for a collector

PSA said it deactivated the certificates for the stolen items and notified marketplace partners. A stolen slab offered for sale should therefore fail PSA's cert lookup. Anyone buying a high-value PSA card in the coming months should run the cert before paying. That only protects the slab. As Heavy noted, a dead cert does not stop someone cracking the card out of its holder and selling it raw, and a raw card has no cert to check.

For the people who lost cards, the cap matters. PSA said it is arranging compensation based on fair market value. Emails shared by customers, as reported by Cardlines, say payment is generally limited to the lesser of fair market value or the Maximum Insured Value for the submission's service level. A card worth more than its service level's insured value may not be paid in full.

PSA has not said how many submissions were affected. As of 19 October, Cardlines reported no full public accounting of the losses.