Thieves make off with rare Pokémon and sports cards worth nearly $1 million from FedEx truck in Southern California

Trading cards worth an estimated $963,000, including sports and Pokémon cards, have been stolen from a FedEx truck in Southern California. Police have made no arrests so far. Santa Ana police were called on Tuesday last week to Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), a trading card authentication and grading company, over the theft, according to an NBC News report.

Police spokesperson Natalie Garcia said two pallets of cards were taken and a third was "disrupted". Santa Ana is about 33 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Garcia said the value of the stolen goods could go up. She said it remains an open case and that no arrests have been made and no stolen goods recovered.


Collectors count their losses

Nick Andrews, who goes by the name Boston Card Hunter on social media, said on X that there are multiple victims. He said one of them lost cards worth $500,000. He said the theft could end up as one of the biggest in the history of trading cards.

Andrews has put together a list of cards claimed to have been taken. It had reached 383 cards by Monday evening. It includes a 1995 Upper Deck 23K Gold Michael Jordan card and a 2024 One Piece Simplified Chinese 1st Anniversary Set Nami card.

A card trader who goes by the name Sky-B said in a YouTube video on Monday that he lost 104 cards collected over two years. He said many of them cannot be replaced and described himself as "absolutely financially destroyed".

According to him, the cards had been certified at PSA and were on their way back to him in Michigan when he found out they had been stolen. He said he paid $8,000 in grading fees. He added that his cards were insured for up to $156,000, which is below their likely market value. He also said he would lose the added value that grading gives to a card.

A PSA spokesperson said in an email that grading fees will be returned along with the fair market value of the cards involved. The company said it is working with investigators. It has also deactivated the certificates of the stolen cards and told marketplace partners to watch out for rare and serialised items.

FedEx said the security of customers' shipments is a top priority and that it is working with local law enforcement on the investigation.

PSA describes itself on its website as a leading third-party authentication and grading service. It also says it can sell customers' cards online for a share of the selling price.

In 2024, a FedEx shipment of 54 vintage baseball cards worth $2.1 million was delivered to a Best Western hotel in Strongsville, Ohio, for a sports card conference. A hotel employee stole the cards and was sentenced to four to six years in prison, prosecutors in nearby Cleveland said, according to the NBC News report.