What was stolen in the PSA truck heist

On Oct 23, PSA published the list of items stolen from a FedEx truck near its Santa Ana facility (PSA (opens in a new tab)). PSA reported the theft to police on Oct 13 (NBC Los Angeles (opens in a new tab)). The list runs to 6,451 cert numbers. Each comes with PSA's description of the card and nothing else: no grade and no value (PSA's list (opens in a new tab)).

We grouped those entries into 3,916 unique cards. Every count below comes from that parse and is recomputed each time we rebuild the site from the list.

Mostly Pokémon and One Piece

Pokémon is the largest share: 2,978 slabs across 1,535 different cards. One Piece adds 898. Sports cards come to 2,170 slabs. The rest are Yu-Gi-Oh! (58), Magic (8) and 339 others, including Dragon Ball, Disney Lorcana and 1920s film-star cards of Charlie Chaplin. 14 of those others are PSA no-grade vouchers with no card details.

Police first described the cargo as "sports cards and Pokémon cards" (The Athletic (opens in a new tab)), and an X trending summary later called the whole list Pokémon (X trending (opens in a new tab)). The list is wider than either description.

29% of it is Japanese

1,864 slabs, 29% of the list, are Japanese-language cards, most of them Pokémon. English cards make up 4,367. The rest are Chinese, Korean and a few other languages.

Most of it is new

4,669 slabs, 72% of the list, are cards from the 2020s, and 913 are promo cards. The oldest dated cards are from 1923, and 201 slabs are from before 1980.

The sports cards

Basketball leads with 879 slabs, then baseball (639) and football (432). Sports is the most varied part of the list: 1,726 different cards across 2,170 slabs, and 1,538 of those cards appear only once. Across every category, 206 slabs are autographed cards.

The cards with the most copies

Leaving out the 14 no-grade vouchers, which have no card details, 3,012 of the remaining 3,913 cards appear on the list only once. Others were stolen in bulk: 155 cards have five or more stolen copies, and the 1990 NBA Hoops #65 Michael Jordan leads with 51. If you see several copies of one of these cards for sale at once, check every cert.

The best-known cards

Most of the list is recent, but it also holds some of the hobby's most famous cards. On the Pokémon side there is a 1999 Base Set 1st Edition Charizard (cert 177980867), a Shadowless Base Set Charizard, a Rayquaza Gold Star from EX Deoxys, a Shining Charizard from Neo Destiny and a 1st Edition Dark Charizard from Team Rocket. Newer chase cards are on it too, such as the Charizard ex Special Illustration Rare from Pokémon 151.

From Magic, the list has the Smaug the Magnificent Gleaming Gold from The Hobbit set. An owner on r/psagrading says their PSA 9 copy of that card was on the truck, as Dexerto reported (Dexerto (opens in a new tab)). That is the owner's own account.

What it is worth

PSA's list has no prices. The only official figure is PSA's estimate given to police: about $963,000 for two of the three pallets (The Athletic (opens in a new tab)). Police say the full value has not been determined (AP via ABC News (opens in a new tab)). SlabHeist estimates values card by card from cited public sales, and only where we have found them.

How we counted

We grouped PSA's 6,451 entries by their exact description, which gives 3,916 unique cards, and read the category, language, sport and year from each description. 14 of those entries (3 descriptions) carry no card details at all, only a no-grade voucher note. They stay in the totals and the category counts as PSA listed them, and are left out of the counts of copies. Our methodology explains the rest.