It looked like the right card. It looked like the surface would have- gloss. The centering looked almost too clean to be real. I think the price, which was around $80,000, was high enough to show that it was real. There was a Denver collector across from it, though, who had been buying and selling Pokemon cards for years, long before this market became popular. This collector thought something wasn’t right.
He held it off to the side. Then another. If you roll the edges of a 1999 Base Set Charizard between your fingers, they should feel like the real thing. He had seen enough of them to know how light acts on a real surface. It didn’t feel right. For someone who hasn’t done this long enough, that’s hard to explain, but collectors often say it before they can explain why. That card was never given or received. Also, you should ask: how close was it?
Charizard is now the collectible that is copied the most. That’s not just a random thought; it’s the main conclusion of PSA’s very first public fraud report, which came out on May 7, 2025. 32 pages long. The document put Charizard higher than Michael Jordan, Mickey Mantle, and all the other sports cards that have been talked about a lot in the last 20 years. “Charizard is kind of like Michael Jordan,” said Ryan Hoge, President of PSA. Everyone knows that person and wants to be like them. The very thing that makes it dangerous is the desire.
The estimated market value of fake collectibles that PSA caught in 2025 was more than $200 million. Years ago, the amount of counterfeit goods sold went up 45.3%. During the same time period, the number of fake Pokemon TCG submissions went up by 125%. Compared to that, sales of sports cards went up 5.1%, which sounds good until you see the baseline. Last year, 61.9% of the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards sent to PSA were fake. A score of 92.3% was given to the T206 Honus Wagner. The market for fake sports goods isn’t growing because it’s already full. People who make fake Pokemon are growing their businesses right now, and the numbers are growing quickly.
The fraud report stands out because it focuses on the middle level. Matt Hendler, Head of Grading Brand Protection at PSA, said it was like counterfeiting money: thieves target the $10 and $20 bills but not the $100. In 2025, the fake cards that were making the most money weren’t the holy grails that most collectors know by heart. These cards were well-known, mid-range ones with good names. For example, the M Gengar EX from Phantom Forces went up 656% year over year, the Lugia EX from Plasma Storm went up 640%, and the M Rayquaza EX from Roaring Skies went up 520%. Cards that go for a few hundred dollars tend to move quickly and don’t get as much attention as a five-figure Charizard.
The person who fakes money does the math like that. Some people will hand over $200 without giving it a second thought after printing one convincing M Gengar.
Then there are cards that have been changed, which is sometimes even worse than counterfeiting. A changed card is a real card that has been changed. To get a higher grade, the edges were trimmed, the surface was recolored, and gloss was added or taken away. The base is the real deal. This is what makes it tougher to catch. Nine of the ten subjects that were changed the most in PSA’s 2025 data were Pokemon characters. Changed Pokemon cards went up 407% year over year. Changed sports cards went up 1.6%. These aren’t fakes that can’t be seen with a simple loupe. They are real cards that have been secretly changed, and the collector who buys one is counting on the exact signals that the card has been programmed to fake.
When you get back to Denver, the collector who turned down that Charizard isn’t known for it. He didn’t write about it in a public place. This kind of thing happens a lot more often than the market wants to admit: a buyer with less experience reads something that a buyer with more experience doesn’t see, and the deal falls through. Over 80,000 hours of specialized training for graders were logged by PSA in 2025. Their reference library now has more than 270 million images of cards, and their own AI checks each submission against the database. However, Hoge made sure to point out that a computer still can’t copy a grader’s sense of touch or even smell.
Of course, that makes me feel both calm and uneasy. Someone who has dealt enough real cards to know when someone isn’t being honest might still be the best way to protect against a $80,000 mistake.
