Collectors sent rare Pokémon and sports cards to get graded. Then thieves stole nearly $1 million worth of them from the FedEx truck taking them home

Collectors send their cards to authenticators for one reason: to find out what they’re worth, and usually to make them worth more.

A card that comes back graded from an authenticator often comes sealed in plastic with a high grade can sell for many times what it did raw.

This month, a batch of them got the news they’d been waiting for.

Their grades were in, some of them perfect 10s, and the cards were on their way home via delivery.

But suddenly, the tracking stopped updating.

On Oct.

13, thieves broke into a FedEx truck outside Professional Sports Authenticator’s (PSA) office in Santa Ana, Calif., and drove off with nearly $1 million in Pokémon and sports cards.

The collectors who owned them had spent months and thousands of dollars in fees proving what the cards were worth—all for thieves to take two pallets of the cards and make off with the rare collectors’ items.

“The Santa Ana Police Department is actively investigating a theft that occurred on October 13, 2026, at 1610 E.

St.

Andrew Place,” the department said in a statement to Fortune .

An officer responded to PSA, and police said about two pallets of cards were stolen from the truck and a third was disturbed.

“The estimated value of the stolen cards at the time of the incident was $963,000.

However, the exact value of the stolen items has not yet been determined,” the department said, referring to PSA’s insurance payout, which is capped at what each collector guessed before PSA graded the cards.