SANTA ANA, Calif. -- Nearly $1 million in rare trading cards, including highly valued Pokémon cards, were stolen from a FedEx truck parked near a California business that authenticates and grades the collectible items, according to police.

The theft is the latest in a string of heists involving Pokémon cards, which have exponentially increased in value in recent years.

The Santa Ana Police Department said in a statement on Tuesday that the heist occurred on Oct. 13 outside the Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) office in Santa Ana.

The hundreds of stolen cards are estimated to be worth a total of $963,000, according to police.

"However, the exact value of the stolen items has not yet been determined," according to the Santa Ana police statement.

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[–] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Given the recent string of complex designs and the grading industry for sealing high value cards, I would imagine counterfiting them would be much harder. I view this more inline with the Italian chocolate thefts than a more complex enterprise. The product could be viewed as comodities, although they arnt consumed like food, but due to the random nature of the packs, the distributed contents wont be IDd or tagged (only the larger boxes/packs, which are meant to be broken). The reason food is the more likely target is that people will eat the evidence if you can fence a box of candy to a bunch of vendors who wont ask questions. This rings the same to me.

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