It began with someone staring at a picture for an extended period of time, as these things frequently do. A $120,000 Stephen Curry rookie patch autograph caught Kyle’s attention. Kyle is a 32-year-old collector who spends his evenings relaxing by perusing card listings. The autograph appeared overly tidy. He opened his own files, located an old photo with a smudged signature, and placed the two next to each other. Smear and all, they matched, but the smear had vanished. Other collectors flocked to confirm his findings within minutes of him posting them on a message board. It appeared that a card had been altered, regraded, and discreetly resold.
That one finding paved the way for much more. Cards that were cut at the edges, bleached to get rid of stains, and cleaned using methods that fall just short of what grading companies deem appropriate were all part of a pattern rather than an isolated incident. Two amateur researchers eventually built a database of more than 300 cards they believed had been altered and resubmitted, everything from Mickey Mantle to James Harden, worth a combined $1.4 million. The FBI became involved. Refunds began to be given by auction houses. It’s the kind of tale that makes you question how long this has been going on in the open.
However, a few bad actors using rubbing alcohol and Q-tips isn’t really the deeper problem. It concerns a grading system that collectors have relied on for many years without realizing how arbitrary it is. A card sent to PSA may receive a 9. If you take it out of its holder and submit it again, the result could be a 6 or a 10. This work cannot be performed by a universal machine. It’s a person making a decision that has a significant financial impact while examining corners, centering, and surface wear.
Then, in 2026, PSA was caught up in its own mess. About thirty nearly identical cards, the majority of which were graded PSA 9, were submitted by a Pokémon collector. He sold a number of them at PSA 9 prices through PSA’s own buyback program. Eleven of those same certified cards subtly returned as PSA 10s after he made the results public, and the people who had just sold them at the lower number were not informed.
According to PSA, it was just fixing a mistake following a complaint. To be honest, it’s difficult to blame collectors for not accepting that explanation. Whether or not anything improper actually happened, it is nearly impossible to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest when the company grading your card is also the one offering to buy it back.
Resale prices have shown the effects. PSA slabs reportedly dropped 10 to 20 percent on platforms like eBay in the weeks after the story spread, particularly in the Pokémon market. The number of submissions to rivals like Beckett and SGC increased. Some dealers began to openly distance themselves from PSA. None of this has dethroned PSA, which still processes the overwhelming majority of cards submitted industry-wide. But there’s a sense now, among longtime collectors especially, that the slab isn’t the guarantee it once felt like.
What’s changed, more than anything, is the posture of the hobby itself. Collectors check certification numbers before buying. They compare grades across companies. Some are going back to raw, ungraded vintage cards, betting that what you see is at least what you get. It’s a quieter, more skeptical version of a hobby that used to run almost entirely on trust. Whether that trust comes back fully is still an open question, and probably depends less on apology statements and more on what grading companies are willing to actually show their customers going forward.
