Key Takeaways
- 6,451 PSA-graded cards were stolen from a FedEx truck in Santa Ana, California on October 13, 2026.
- The FBI and Santa Ana Police Department are jointly investigating the theft.
- Pokémon cards made up the largest share at 2,978 items, followed by One Piece (898), basketball (880), baseball (640), and football (433) cards.
- The estimated value of the stolen haul is at least $963,000 — though collectors believe the real figure could be in the millions.
- PSA has deactivated all stolen certification numbers and shared a full list with marketplaces, auction houses, and digital platforms to block resale.
- Customers who shipped with a PSA return label are already receiving insurance payouts. Those who used their own label are working with a dedicated PSA team.
- No arrests have been made and no cards have been recovered as of writing.
This is a rough one for the collecting community. Thousands of freshly graded cards — submitted by collectors across the entire country, each one trusted to PSA and FedEx to make it home — were lifted from a parked delivery truck in Santa Ana, California, and now the FBI is involved. The scale of the theft, both in number of items and estimated value, has sent shockwaves through the trading card world, and with Pokémon making up the single largest chunk of what was taken, it hits close to home for a lot of people in the gaming community specifically.
What Happened Outside PSA’s Santa Ana Facility
On October 13, a FedEx driver parked a delivery truck near PSA’s grading headquarters in Santa Ana, California, and left the vehicle unattended. According to the Santa Ana Police Department, the truck was left alone for somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes — exactly how long is still part of the ongoing investigation. When the driver returned, the lock had been broken and two full pallets of cards were gone. A third pallet had been disturbed, with some packages taken from it as well.
Each of those pallets reportedly held around 100 packages each, meaning this wasn’t a smash-and-grab of a few boxes. Whoever did this knew what they were doing, and they moved fast. The cards inside those pallets belonged to collectors from all over the United States who had sent their items to PSA for professional grading and authentication — people who trusted the system to get their cards back safely. Instead, they received an email from PSA explaining that their submissions were among the stolen items.
What Was Taken — And What It’s Worth
In total, 6,451 PSA-graded items were confirmed stolen. PSA has published a complete list of every affected card, including its certification number and serial number for serialised items. Breaking the list down by category, Pokémon cards accounted for 2,978 of the stolen items — nearly half of the entire haul. That was followed by 898 One Piece cards, 880 basketball cards, 640 baseball cards, and 433 football cards, with various other collectibles making up the rest.
The Santa Ana Police Department put the initial estimated value of the stolen items at $963,000, while adding that the exact total hadn’t been fully determined pending a complete scan of remaining packages. But people closer to the situation believe the real number is significantly higher. Card collector Nick Andrews, speaking to the Associated Press, said he’d heard from more than two dozen affected collectors and put the likely total in the “millions of dollars.” One report noted that a single collector who submitted cards on behalf of several clients lost around $500,000 in declared value alone. One individual One Piece card — a c07 Roronoa Zoro — was reportedly worth $500,000 on its own according to community tracking.
One collector known online as Sky-B Cards posted a YouTube video confirming that his 104 cards — which he had paid over $8,000 to have graded and insured for more than $150,000 — were among the stolen items. His situation captures the personal scale of what happened here. These aren’t faceless inventory to the people who lost them; they represent years of collecting, real money spent on grading fees, and in many cases, items that hold serious sentimental value beyond their price tag.
How PSA Is Responding
PSA, operated by parent company Collectors, moved quickly to limit the damage. The company immediately deactivated the certification numbers for all 6,451 stolen items and sent the full list — including cert numbers and serial numbers for serialised cards — to marketplace sellers, auction houses, and digital commerce platforms. The goal is to make it as hard as possible to flip these cards without getting flagged. Any buyer who tries to verify a stolen card through PSA’s lookup will find it deactivated, which should significantly complicate resale through legitimate channels.
PSA also confirmed it has handed investigators video footage from its facility, shipment manifests, and item-level records to assist the FBI and Santa Ana police. The company says recovering every stolen item and returning it to its rightful owner is the top priority.
On the compensation front, PSA has refunded all grading fees on affected orders — made clear that this is separate from any compensation for the cards themselves. Collectors who shipped using a PSA return label are covered under PSA’s insurance, and payments have reportedly already started going out. Those who shipped with their own label are being handled by a dedicated PSA team on a case-by-case basis. Anyone who purchased their cards through a dealer will need to contact that dealer directly. Compensation is based on fair market value, up to each order’s declared maximum insured value. If a stolen card is eventually recovered, the customer also has the option to receive the item back in lieu of payment.
The Bigger Picture: Card Theft Is a Growing Problem
This incident is part of a wider, troubling trend in the trading card world. Earlier this year in February, a shop in Anaheim reported $180,000 in collectibles and Pokémon cards stolen in a break-in. In June, two separate stores in Northern California had thousands of dollars in trading cards stolen on the same day. And internationally, the pattern is just as clear — in July 2026, Cheshire Police confirmed that brothers Keith and Shane Johnson had been caught after breaking into Celestial Collectables in England and stealing Pokémon cards worth £62,000.
The reason thieves keep targeting trading cards is pretty simple: rare and graded cards can be worth enormous amounts of money, they’re compact and easy to move, and while PSA’s cert deactivation system makes selling through major platforms riskier, there are still avenues like card shows, private sales, and overseas markets where stolen cards can potentially change hands without easy detection. The Pokémon TCG market in particular has exploded in value over the past several years, making it an increasingly attractive target.
As of now, no arrests have been made and no stolen items have been recovered. Anyone with information on the theft is urged to contact the FBI’s Los Angeles field office or the Santa Ana Police Department directly.
For collectors specifically worried about card security and the game industry’s ongoing vulnerabilities, check out our coverage on the PHP2Shell critical vulnerability that took games offline, and keep up with the latest gaming news including the GTA 6 preorder figures that are already breaking every record in the industry.
