UPDATE, Oct. 20, 2026: Santa Ana police say the estimated value of the stolen cards was at least $963,000 when the theft was reported, but the exact total is still being determined. No arrests or recoveries had been announced as of Tuesday afternoon.
PSA-graded sports and Pokémon cards worth at least $963,000 were stolen from a FedEx truck outside the company’s Southern California facility in Santa Ana, leaving affected collectors without the freshly graded orders that were supposed to be headed home.
There are a few moments in collecting that feel worse than dropping a big submission at the post office. One of them is getting the notification that the cards you already paid to grade, already waited on and were finally supposed to get back are gone.
Police said the theft happened Oct. 13 after the truck’s lock was removed. Two pallets of cards were taken and a third pallet was disturbed. The $963,000 figure is an early estimate, not a finalized tally, and the hobby’s own attempts to identify the missing cards have grown well beyond a few isolated slabs. For collectors, this is not just a story about a truck getting hit. These were cards that had made it through grading and were on the last leg home.
What PSA has told affected collectors
PSA parent company Collectors said it has contacted affected customers, deactivated the certification numbers on the stolen cards and notified marketplace partners to watch for rare and serialized items. The company said it is working with FedEx and law enforcement.
More importantly for the people who lost cards, the customer email shared publicly says PSA will compensate affected orders based on fair market value up to the Maximum Insured Value (MIV) selected for each item. PSA said it would explain how that valuation is determined when it follows up with customers.
That wording matters. “Fair market value” sounds simple until you are dealing with a thinly traded card, a true one-of-one or a card you spent years tracking down. And the MIV cap can matter even more if a collector selected a lower service level than the card’s eventual graded value. PSA’s published terms say compensation cannot exceed the lower of fair market value or the applicable MIV.
This is why collector reaction online has been so uneasy. YouTuber and collector Sky-B Cards shared screenshots of PSA’s email about his stolen 104-card submission. The email did not give him a dollar amount or a final valuation. It gave him the fair-market-value-up-to-MIV formula and said PSA would follow up to explain how it would calculate the payout. Sky-B said he spent more than $8,000 on grading and chose coverage up to $156,000, while also saying some of the cards would be difficult or impossible to replace.
Another collector, Seth Phifer, posted that five of his cards were on the truck, attached photos of the cards and put their value at $70,000. He said he received the same PSA email. That is a concrete example of how wide the impact may be, but it is not evidence of a $70,000 PSA offer. CBS Los Angeles reported that Sky-B said he had heard some affected collectors found early offers “insultingly low.” Neither PSA nor those collectors have publicly documented a specific final payout, so it is too soon to report a confirmed amount for any individual claim.
Boston Card Hunter has been compiling a public, crowdsourced list of reported stolen serial-numbered cards to help the hobby spot them. That list is useful, but it is not an official count from PSA or police.
A cert deactivation helps, but it does not make collectors whole
Deactivating PSA cert numbers and notifying marketplaces is the right immediate move. It gives auction houses, dealers and buyers a way to flag a slab that turns up after the theft. It also makes it harder for someone to move a card casually through the usual channels.
But collectors are not just looking at a spreadsheet of values here. Some lost cards were likely set chases, personal grails, childhood cards or the kind of scarce modern hits that do not have another copy sitting on eBay. A payout can be important. It cannot always recreate the collection that was in that box.
Why this hits especially hard after PSA’s 2026 changes
This theft is not PSA’s fault in the sense that it was a criminal act involving a third-party shipping vehicle. Still, it lands after a frustrating year for collectors who use PSA. In February, PSA raised grading prices again in 2026: Value Bulk moved from $21.99 to $24.99, Value from $27.99 to $32.99, and several higher tiers also became more expensive.
The increase did not only hit wallets. Value Plus, Value Max and Regular submissions also received longer estimated turnaround windows. We also broke down PSA’s updated 2026 turnaround times, which ranged from days for premium tiers to months for lower-cost submissions depending on the service level.
That does not cause a theft, obviously. But it is the context that makes this one sting. Collectors have already been asked to spend more, be pickier with what they submit and wait longer for the cards to come back. Now, for the collectors on this truck, the insurance number entered during submission has become the number that could determine whether they are made whole.
What affected collectors and buyers should watch for
- Affected PSA customers: Save your submission form, the order’s card list, photos, declared values, grading invoices and any PSA correspondence. Those details will matter if PSA asks questions about fair market value or the MIV attached to a specific card.
- Buyers and sellers: Be extra careful with recently graded cards that match the reported stolen-card lists. Check the PSA certification number and ask for clear provenance before making a high-dollar deal. Do not assume a card is stolen based on a vague match alone.
- The rest of us sending cards in: Treat Maximum Insured Value as more than a submission-form box. The service level, the declared value and the documentation you keep can matter if something goes wrong after your cards leave your hands.
The bottom line
The hobby talks constantly about comps, pop reports and resale value. This is the ugly reminder that the physical card still has to travel, even after it gets the slab and the grade everyone wants.
PSA has taken the sensible first steps: contacting customers, shutting down the affected certs and alerting marketplaces. The next part is the one collectors will be watching closely. Fair market value is one thing on paper. Making people feel fairly treated after losing cards they may never be able to replace is another.
Reporting for this story includes the Associated Press, Santa Ana Police information and publicly shared communication from affected PSA customers.
PSA cards stolen from FedEx truck FAQ
How much were the PSA-graded cards stolen from the FedEx truck worth?
Santa Ana police initially estimated the stolen cards at at least $963,000. The exact total has not been determined and could change as investigators identify the contents of the affected shipments.
Will PSA compensate collectors whose cards were stolen?
PSA says it has contacted affected customers and is arranging compensation based on fair market value. The customer communication shared publicly says payment is capped at the Maximum Insured Value selected for each item.
What happened to the PSA cert numbers on the stolen cards?
PSA says it deactivated the certificates associated with the stolen cards and notified marketplace partners so they can watch for rare and serialized items that may appear for sale.
