Thieves made off with an estimated $963,000 worth of trading cards from a FedEx truck outside Professional Sports Authenticator in Santa Ana last week, a haul police say could climb even higher as owners continue checking what disappeared. The cards were being moved through the authentication company’s Santa Ana operation when the theft occurred, and the loss now stretches across multiple collectors.
The case drew fresh attention this week because Santa Ana police said officers responded on Tuesday to the company’s location about the theft, while card owners kept comparing notes and building lists of what was gone. Santa Ana is about 33 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and the cards at issue were part of a shipment already headed back to customers after grading.
By Monday evening, one list of claimed stolen cards had grown to as many as 383 items, according to Nick Andrews, who said the haul may rank among the biggest in trading card history. The list included a 1995 Upper Deck 23K Gold Michael Jordan card and a 2024 One Piece Simplified Chinese 1st Anniversary Set Nami, two examples of how the theft swept up both high-end sports cards and popular collectibles from the same shipment.
Sky-B said 104 cards he had accumulated over two years were missing, and he said the shipment contained many irreplaceable cards. He said the cards were dropped off at Professional Sports Authenticator and had started their journey back to him in Michigan before he discovered they had been stolen. He also said he paid $8,000 in grading fees and that the cards were insured up to $156,000, a figure that falls short of what he believes the collection was worth.
That gap is part of what has fueled concern inside the hobby. Police said the value could rise as more owners identify losses, while one company spokesperson said grading fees would be returned along with the fair market value of the cards involved. The company also said it had deactivated the certificates for the stolen items and notified marketplace partners to watch for rare and serialized items.
Professional Sports Authenticator describes itself on its website as “the leading third-party authentication and grading service,” and says it can help customers “turn cards into currency” by selling them online for a percentage of the selling price. That same system now leaves the company trying to contain the damage from a shipment that was already certified and on its way back when it vanished.
FedEx said it was working with local law enforcement, but the open question is the one collectors keep coming back to: how the thieves got to two pallets of cards and disrupted a third without anyone yet saying where the theft happened or whether any of the cards have been recovered. For now, the missing shipment is still missing, and the list of what was taken keeps getting longer.
