Thievery at PSA

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Run of Show

Thievery at PSA

On October 13th, thieves broke into a FedEx truck outside PSA’s California headquarters and stole nearly $1 million worth of graded trading cards that were being shipped back to customers.

: a FedEx truck was parked outside PSA’s grading center in Santa Ana before it was broken into. The driver left the truck unattended for 60-90 minutes and returned to find the truck’s lock broken. Three pallets were stolen from the truck full of already graded cards. Two pallets had around 100 packages each in them and the third pallet had 50 packages. The value of the first two pallets is estimated to be around $963,000, for now. PSA is still figuring out the value of the third pallet.

One thing working against the thieves is that every PSA-graded card has a unique certification number, and PSA has deactivated the certification numbers of the stolen cards. It probably won’t stop the thieves from selling the cards on black markets or passing them around through card shows, but it will definitely make it harder as some of the cards are 1/1s and will have eyes all over them.

For the collectors that were affected, PSA says it’s figuring out compensation based on the fair market value of the cards, but the payout is capped at the insurance limits the collectors chose at checkout.

Some of the affected collectors took to 𝕏 to air out their grievances against PSA.

Fuzzydunlop45 posted PSA’s email to him about his stolen cards plus his response.

SKYBCards had 104 cards stolen that are worth over $100,000.

Other users speculate the real value of the stolen cards are somewhere in the mid 7 figures. One card alone, the c07 Roronoa Zoro PSA 10 pop 12, is said to be valued at $500k.

Darren Rovell, founder of cllct Media, has a good take about how there’s actually a much larger security problem in the trading card industry:

Completely understand the fire PSA is under for the FedEx truck theft.But the biggest threats don’t lie with PSA.They lie with inside jobs and third party carriers. The biggest threat of your cards going missing happens when you insure a package for $50K and leave the shipper.The simple name PSA or Collectors in the address box is the threat.There must be a change and it must be today. PSA and a a preferred carrier must work on additional security measures and finally offer the right insurance for transit within the collectibles market.

We’ll be discussing on the show today.

Clip Spotlight: Steve Jobs didn't believe gaming was a market worth pursuing because it didn't have a billion users, according to Bing Gordon.

"I spoke at WWDC in 2007 and I told Steve that games are big. They have like 400 million monthly players."

Steve's response: "Bing, 400 million? We don't start anything until we get to one billion."

"He disrespected games."

"I started thinking, 'Oh boy, he's arrogant.'"

"Then I thought, 'Oh boy, he's right.'"