A major theft involving 6,451 collectible Pokémon and sports trading cards, with a total value of over 860,000 euros, has caused an uproar in the collector community in the United States. The items disappeared from a FedEx truck in California, and no arrests have been announced so far.
Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), a company that specializes in the grading and authentication of collectibles, announced on Friday that the cards were stolen on October 13, after a shipping company truck picked up customer orders from its facility in Santa Ana, California.
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According to authorities, the theft involved nearly 250 packages, with the value of the items initially estimated at approximately 860,000 euros.
The FedEx truck was reportedly left unattended for 60 to 90 minutes outside PSA’s headquarters while the driver was away. It was reported that the vehicle’s lock had been tampered with.
“The pallets contained various collectible cards, including, for example, sports cards and Pokémon cards,” the Santa Ana Police Department had previously told The California Post.
PSA announced that it is working with the FBI and the Santa Ana Police Department to locate the stolen items, and has published a complete list of the cards that went missing.
At the same time, it has deactivated the cards’ authorization numbers to make it more difficult to resell them.
“Recovering every stolen item and returning it to its owner is our top priority,” the company said in a statement.
A collector lost 104 cards he had been collecting for two years
The theft has caused great upheaval among collectors who had devoted years to building their collections and had entrusted their cards to PSA for grading and authentication.
Among those affected is the well-known collector and YouTuber Sky-B Cards, who revealed that he had paid approximately 7,560 euros just for the grading fees on 104 cards.
That particular order was insured for approximately 139,000 euros.
In a video he posted, the collector described his disappointment over the loss of the items.
“These were 104 cards that I collected over the course of two years. There are many irreplaceable cards among them, which I will never see again,” he said.
The case also highlights the difficulty of replacing such collectibles, as for their owners, their value is not necessarily limited to the monetary amount that an insurance payout might provide.
The FBI’s investigation and compensation for the owners
PSA has already provided law enforcement with security camera footage, shipping documents, and detailed records for each item contained in the stolen packages.
The company stated that it is in daily contact with the authorities as the investigation continues.
Meanwhile, the complete list of stolen items has been forwarded to online marketplaces, auction houses, and e-commerce platforms in order to detect any attempts to sell them.
The list includes the cards’ certification numbers, as well as the serial numbers of those with unique numbering.
This allows the platforms to monitor whether any of the stolen items appear for sale.
At the same time, PSA has begun contacting customers affected by the theft and has already refunded the amounts they paid for the appraisal of those specific cards.
Customers who used PSA’s return labels to ship their items can now begin the compensation process, and, according to the company, payments have already begun.
The compensation amount will be calculated based on the fair market value of each item, without exceeding the declared maximum insurance amount.
PSA also clarified that customers who receive compensation will retain the right to claim the return of their cards if they are located at a later date.
In a statement, the company apologized to the collectors who were affected, emphasizing that the security measures it has implemented have allowed it to process and safely return to their owners more than 99.9% of the items entrusted to it over the past year.
Despite efforts to locate the cards and compensation procedures, thousands of collectibles remain missing, while investigations by U.S. authorities continue.
Source: Proto Thema
