Fanatics sold a PSA 10 Expedition holo Dragonite for $288,000 as part of their Oct 23 Premier auction.
A screenshot of the PSA 10 Expedition Holo Dragonite sold on Fanatics for $288,000.
Back in April of this year, that same card sold for just $50,000. And it sold for even less before then.
It is one of many such stories from the past few months, which have seen new record prices for all kinds of vintage cards.
What makes this particular sale different, is the drama that has unfolded since.
Following the record sale, a Reddit user, u/Doemi-14, claimed that they own the PSA 10 Dragonite with that cert number, and have not sold it. They believe the card sold by Fanatics is fake.
A screenshot of the Reddit post demonstrating ownership of the sold card.
This controversy has sparked significant discussion on the Elite Fourum (E4), where collectors have been digging into the facts to get to the bottom of what happened.
The early discussion suggested that the sold card was perhaps mislabeled by PSA during a routine reholdering...
But, over time, the more experienced collectors (smpratte, pfm, and others) seem to have concluded that although the card is likely real (perhaps a PSA 9 was cleaned or altered), the label was likely forged.
But regardless of how this plays out, this ordeal highlights the limitations of authentication when buying grading company slabs. As the prices of slabbed shiny cardboard have gotten higher and higher, the incentive to create high-quality forgeries has increased considerably. And, if you think about it, only the original submitter can be sure that the card they receive from a grading company is the one they submitted and has not been tampered with.
This sale of a convincing fake PSA 10 proves that the protections PSA includes on their slabs to help ensure authenticity, including scanning the QR code on the PSA slab, do not guarantee authenticity. It proves the scammers are getting more sophisticated.
(For those familiar with this case: Yes, pfm appears to have identified that the faked PSA slabs append /psa to the end of the URL embedded in the QR code, while legitimate slabs exclude it. However, now that this mistake has been identified and publicized, we should expect scammers to quickly adjust and exclude that additional text from the QR code URLs in the future. This will not remain a useful trick for long.)
Instead, this case reinforces the importance of the tried and true skills and details that support every collectible market. Skills like being able to authenticate and assess card condition yourself, without needing to trust PSA. And details like provenance: The documented history of ownership of the card.
Grading companies were born to eliminate the need for this kind of experience and knowledge. Instead of being able to authenticate and grade a card yourself, you could let PSA do it for you and trust that a slabbed card was authentic and of the condition they assigned.
In doing so, grading companies have unquestionably made collecting trading cards more accessible, and helped grow trading card hobbies in the process.
But, maybe we've put too much trust in them.
This is coming from someone who is not an experienced card grader, so I'm mainly speaking to myself. I've got some learning to do.
It's time to get back to basics.
As usual, thank you so much for reading the TCG Buyers Club newsletter. My name's Grey, I buy cardboard, and I'm on a mission to make collecting and investing in Pokémon simple.
Cheers 🍻
