How a scandal unfolded and shaped the battle for card collecting’s soul

It’s late August of 2019 and Kyle sits down in his home office looking to unwind a bit before bed. As he often does before retiring for the night, he logs on to his computer and navigates to the familiar sites where his community of card collectors gather. He scours these sites for a specific sub-set of cards that have piqued his interest and scrolls through some recent offerings. Retail therapy as stress relief, he explains.

He plans on going to bed soon but then he spots a Stephen Curry RPA (Rookie Patch Autograph) card that he has been keeping tabs on since last summer.

Kyle, a 32-year-old who works in education and asked that only his first name be used, openly acknowledges he fits some of the more banal stereotypes of a card collector. The desk beside his computer is stacked to the brim with cards. His workspace is cluttered — with memorabilia and detritus from his day job.

But if his environs are in disarray, his research is not. The files on his computer are meticulous, organized by card type and serial number and fastidiously researched. He’s aggregated information — via traditional methods like Google, eBay, Instagram, YouTube and WorthPoint, a collectibles research and valuation site, and less-traversed corners of the internet such as Chinese image search engines that are sometimes reliable, sometimes not. Among his interests are all 99 Steph Curry RPA cards ever produced.

When he saw the new listing pop up on his screen, something about the card didn’t feel right. He sat up straight in his chair, jolted by a surge of adrenaline that would keep him up for hours. He remembered that there had been one card from that batch with a smeared autograph, one he figured served as more or less the “training wheels” for the other cards as Curry perfected his small, tight, cursive signature.

Other aspects of the listing seemed suspect: The glare of light that obscured the card’s serial number and the omission of the serial number in the seller’s description.

Buzzing with the anticipation of a potentially explosive discovery, Kyle methodically went through each file he had, comparing the photographic image he had of each card with the one that had been listed on Aug. 31, 2019, for $120,000 by a seller on the West Coast.

When he opened file 16, he found it. A photograph of that smeared autograph he remembered. The one listed on Ebay looked virtually identical, save for that smear.

Kyle decided to enlist some help. He sought opinions from a few people he knew from the Blowout card message board forum. At 8:43 p.m., “Deadshot,” Kyle’s message board alias, posted his suspicions under the title: “Am I seeing this right? Steph Curry RPA,” including photographic evidence of his findings, links to previous transactional history, and a theory:

“To me, it looks like this card was purchased at a discounted rate because of the smear, cleaned up, the patch was swapped for a nicer one, and then regraded for resale. Am I seeing this right?”

Within nine minutes, there was a reply. And over the next few hours, as Kyle refreshed the message board page every minute, his phone buzzed with texts and emails — input from others who had seen his post and were eager to help.

Someone with photoshop expertise sent him an overlay of the two cards, which superimposes one image on top of another, revealing potential discrepancies in non-identical items. Once he received that, it became clear this was serial card No. 16, altered and passed off as if it were in its original condition. The two cards matched up exactly. All it likely took was a Q-tip, some rubbing alcohol and a steady hand.

Said Kyle: “We knew this was the one.”

To understand the impact of Kyle’s discovery, and the cascade of similar revelations of fraud that have largely been exposed by a group of diligent researchers on the card-collecting message boards, one must understand the nuances of the hobby itself and the sanctity of the cards these enthusiasts are toiling to protect.

Unlike the world of fine art, where conservation and restoration allow for more tactile manipulation, in the card-collecting world the act of altering or “trimming” a card is sacrilege. While there exists some ambiguity about the extent to which one can legitimately clean a card without changing it materially, any effort to alter a card to maximize its value — by bleaching it, removing blemishes, or “trimming” the edges to make it appear cleaner, sharper and, consequently, more valuable is a cardinal sin. In some cases, it’s a federal crime.

The internet helped fuel the surging interest in cards, which allowed third-party sellers and consigners to make remote transactions simple and seamless. The resulting infusion of cash made card-selling and collecting big business, and that helped open the door to fraud.

Compounding the matter was the emergence of professional card grading companies. Before behemoths like PSA and Beckett entered the marketplace, cards were separated into four tiers to indicate quality. Now there are 1-10 grades with several permutations even within those grades that allow for variance (such as “eye appeal,” which is highly subjective). Potential sellers can pay to send a card to a grading agency, which will then evaluate the card and provide a numerical designation. That dictates its market value. And while this can be a valuable tool to help assess pricing and investment, it can incentivize fraudulent actors.

Here’s how: Some grading companies take a tiered-fee service level based on the value of the card graded. Additionally, because of the subjectivity of grading, graders will, at times, increase the grade of a card when it’s re-submitted. (Collectors have also pointed out concerns about cozy relationships between certain submitters and grading agencies resulting in high grades that seem to be a statistical anomaly.)

There is also little to no transparency about the way numerical grades are determined or how graders are trained (though a February 2020 deposition of Beckett’s Vice President of Grading and Authentication Services Jeromy Murray reveals that Beckett has a guide of procedures and policies and in-house training that employees must undergo).

All of this underscores what is at the heart of the scandal that began in the summer of 2019 and is still roiling the card-collecting community — a fundamental tension between purists who want to see the integrity of the hobby preserved, and those out to enrich themselves by exploiting a system with myriad vulnerabilities.

As one veteran collector described it, it is “the battle for the soul of the hobby.”

The scandal began with an innocuous post on the Blowout card collecting forum by a collector interested in purchasing a raw 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card from a family in a private sale. He held the card and took note of the edges, which felt rough. He took photos for his own records, but did not purchase the card. When he saw a 1952 Mantle for sale through Heritage Auctions and graded by Professional Sports Authenticator (or PSA) at a 4.5, he identified some print marks he remembered about the card in the private sale but thought the edges now looked much cleaner (the card sold Nov. 16, 2018, for $45,907). The bottom left corner also appeared to be pressed. The card then appeared again, in April 2019, also graded by PSA at a 4.5, but with a different PSA serial number, for sale via PWCC, a massive auction house. The card sold on May 9, 2019, for $58,847.50.

By the time of the second sale, the collector took notice and solicited opinions within the forum. He posted his photos of the card, which were analyzed by discerning members. Print fibers and print marks from the card in question and the one in the collector’s photos were then dissected in a comparative analysis, leading users on the forum to deduce that this was the card in question. This snowballing controversy was enough to prompt Betsy Huigens, director of communications at PWCC, to address the issue in a number of posts on the Blowout forum, defending the card by advancing the conservation vs. alteration debate.

The questions prompted by the Mantle discovery then opened up a larger scope of inquiry.

Forum members suspected that if this Mantle card had been altered, other cards that had been submitted for grading in the same batch, by the same seller, were possibly altered as well and started digging in on this possibility. Soon enough, users from the Net 54 forum joined up in investigating this activity, and the effort’s reverberations reached federal law enforcement.

In August 2019, several news outlets reported about an FBI investigation into PWCC and PSA, Professional Sports Authenticator, a third-party sports card authentication service, based on the card-trimming allegations that surfaced on these popular message boards. The federal probe into allegations of fraud involving some of the most prominent power brokers in the industry legitimized the exhaustive work of these online sleuths and catapulted them into folk-hero status among the collecting ranks.

One of the industry’s biggest fish, and one of its most polarizing figures, PWCC’s owner and CEO Brent Huigens, was ensnared in that investigation and continues to cooperate with federal authorities, according to his lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman.

Lichtman, a longtime collector and high-powered criminal defense attorney who has represented the likes of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and John Gotti Jr., said he was reluctant to take Huigens on as a client. Lichtman was among the most vocal critics of Huigens and PWCC when the scandal broke. That’s when Huigens was defending himself publicly and appearing in video interviews, like one widely scorned episode with Cardboard Chronicles (a YouTube channel dedicated to sports cards and collectors). During his appearance he seemed to blur the lines of conservation and restoration, expressed the need for the industry to “mature” and suggested the fallout from the controversy presented the opportunity for a “stage of healing.”

That appearance did not go over well.

“Brent, because of a lot of the things he did publicly — the videos he made, some of them were not taken well by the hobby, for good reason, and I felt the same way — became a very punchable face,” Lichtman said.

But Lichtman ultimately decided to represent Huigens, he said, to facilitate money going back to those card buyers who had been defrauded.

Lichtman demanded Huigens refund clients who purchased cards that were shown to be altered. According to Lichtman, the restitution fund Huigens created has paid out close to $1 million already. Lichtman said that a handful of other dealers have also contributed money to the fund to rectify their own sales of altered cards.

“He became the face of everything wrong in the hobby,” Lichtman said. “I don’t concern myself with what the man’s motive is. I concern myself with representing him to the best of my ability and, at the same time, if I can do something positive for the hobby I love, that’s a win-win.”

Lichtman said that one of his frustrations in handling the case, both in his capacity as an attorney and a fellow collector, has been the fact that some of those who have decried Huigens have also been implicated in previous cases.

“Many of the people calling for Brent’s head are knee-deep in their own fraud,” Lichtman said.

Huigens and PWCC are not the only ones taking a public flogging, however. Plenty of folks in the collecting community bemoan the inefficacy of card graders and some wonder whether it is ineptitude or corruption that has led to so much industry fraud.

Some also believe that there was coordination among auction houses like PWCC and grading companies like PSA.

In April 2020, a class-action lawsuit was filed in California Superior Court alleging not only a conspiracy under RICO charges, but widespread fraud, including consumer fraud, negligent misrepresentation and promoting shill bidding, another sacrilege practice in the industry that refers to the act of artificially inflating prices during a live auction. The complaint names PSA, PWCC and Rick Probstein, “the number one seller of cards on Ebay,” as defendants.

The complaint “seeks recourse for those consumers who were defrauded into purchasing cards at substantially inflated prices and into paying PSA fees to grade cards on the false promise that PSA’s grading system would differentiate authentic originals from altered frauds.”

Jonathan Genish, an attorney for PWCC, called the allegations in the class action “not just inaccurate; they are reckless.”

“Fortunately, our judicial system relies on something glaringly absent from Plaintiff’s claims — evidence,” Genish said. “We look forward to bringing the true facts to light.”

Representatives for PSA have not responded to a request for comment on the case; Probstein, who has yet to announce a legal representative in the case, did not respond to a request for comment.

Keith Olbermann was sitting in the office of his Manhattan apartment recently, holding up an album of cards. The way the sun entered the window and refracted off the plastic sheaf gave the optical illusion, just for a moment, that the top card was encased in cellophane.

Olbermann, a prominent broadcaster with ESPN and a preeminent collector, was temporarily transported back to Bill’s Luncheonette on the corner of Farragut Parkway and Green Street, an old childhood haunt he used to visit back when he could score a pack of cards for a dime and fresh crullers on Sunday. Suddenly, he could envision all the junk the proprietor would sell at the cashier’s table, the yellow and brown holder of small, cheap tobacco pipes, the Formica counter, the four seats in front of the fountain, and all of the Matchbox cars sitting in boxes in the side storage room.

Had he tried to invoke this memory on his own, he couldn’t have conjured the same details. This, he explained, is the magic of cards. Whether it’s memories of the first outing to a Major League game, walking through a passageway that opened to the green expanse of the outfield, or the tactile sensation of needing both hands to hold a 1952 Topps card, they summon a visceral feeling and a portal to the past.

“It’s the ability to imagine,” Olbermann said. “In other words, it’s that invocation of history, whether it’s baseball history, your own baseball history, or your own history punctuated by baseball, it can be invoked by these relics.

“And I say relics in almost a religious sense.”

Olbermann, who became enraptured with collecting cards back in 1967 after receiving a pack as a birthday party favor from a young classmate named Wolfgang and an even larger haul from a local neighborhood kid who traded his inventory for access to Olbermann’s family pool, has amassed a prolific collection. He’s owned four Honus Wagner cards in his lifetime and has even taken to recreating his own version of the 1967 Topps series.

His connection with cards indeed borders on the religious — a tie to history, nostalgia and the romance of a different era. It is a sentiment that many collectors echo when describing what drew them into the hobby, back when aesthetics reigned supreme and the industry had yet to be monetized.

“They have that Proust-ian quality,” said Scott Russell, who is the owner of Birmingham Auctioneers in Pennsylvania. “They really bring you back.”

But just as cards have changed, so too have the collectors. Typically, collectors have interest in three main segmented eras — Pre-War, Vintage (1948-80) and Modern (81-present). And whereas those who began collecting in the the 1960s likely did so because they could buy a pack for a dime, there was a boom in the market beginning in the 1980s when cards from the ’50s became valuable and cards became more generally accepted as a shrewd investment vehicle. By the 1990s, card collecting had become a billion-dollar industry.

Following a decades-long downturn due to overproduction and work stoppages in key card sports like baseball and hockey, the industry has rebounded.

According to an April 2019 Forbes article, cards were outperforming the S&P 500. And while there is some skepticism about how these price indexes were calculated and promoted, the $3.12 million fetched by the 1910 T206 “Jumbo” Honus Wagner card and the $2.88 million that secured the 1952 Topps Mantle dramatically illustrate just how much money is at stake. And with that influx of cash, a different type of clientele entered the marketplace.

Jeffrey Katz, former mayor of Cooperstown, N.Y., baseball author and member of SABR’s Baseball Card’s Research Committee, identifies this as one of the collecting world’s biggest issues. “There are hobbyists and collectors and then there are guys that make dough and there’s always a certain struggle,” Katz said.

Grading agencies entering the fold also dramatically changed the landscape, making the value of a card more standardized, though not necessarily more accurate or dependable. Additionally, there was little transparency about how these grades were determined and virtually no oversight.

There are some purists out there, people like Olbermann, who feel like the emergence of grading companies and “slabbing,” or encasing a card with a grade, has eroded the exact type of interdependence and community that made the hobby special.

“Slabbing erased the need to interact,” Olbermann said.

Olbermann came of age when he’d travel to shows and have dealers throw in an extra card even if you were a little short on cash. When some of the top dealers, guys like Charles “Buck” Barker in St. Louis, Frank Nagy in Detroit and Lionel Carter in Evanston, Ill., would send each other coveted duplicates in Christmas cards over the holidays, as the stories were told.

There’s also, as Olbermann and almost everyone interviewed for this piece expressed, a complete lack of confidence in the competence of the people grading cards. The grading companies have provided a time-saving mechanism and a level of standardization, but those standards are only as reliable as those doing the grading. And many distrust the level of knowledge, experience and rigor among those assessing cards.

Said Olbermann: “It’s always been, in my mind, from its origin point, at best unreliable and at worst deeply corrupt.”

Corruption in the hobby has become more pronounced in recent years. A former auction house owner, Bill Mastro, was sentenced in 2015 to 20 months in federal prison for fraud after admitting to practicing shill bidding and selling fraudulent merchandise. Before being imprisoned, he was one of the industry’s power brokers and headed Mastro Auctions, which raked in millions at the height of its operation.

But his admitted trimming of the iconic T206 Honus Wagner card is one of the most memorable facets of the case. After years of rumors, Mastro acknowledged he had cut the side borders with a paper slicing machine, according to his plea agreement. He was eventually released in 2017 after serving 18 months.

Speaking from his home in suburban Chicago, Mastro still feels it was an overzealous prosecution (“I’m not saying I’m a Boy Scout, but I felt my treatment was very unjust.”) and a colossal waste of federal funds.

“Having been on the side of being persecuted, I’m biased,” Mastro said. “But I think the average human being thinks, ‘Who gives a shit?’”

Brian Brusokas, a federal agent who works in the art crime division of the Chicago field office, handled the case against Mastro. He said getting a prosecutor to care about what some view as a niche hobby was an essential hurdle to clear. Demonstrating exactly how much money was in play was essential.

“I call it a hobby and I smile because at the grassroots it still is, but in reality it’s a billion-dollar business,” Brusokas said. “And for the most part it’s a billion-dollar unregulated business, with the exception of law enforcement investigations that happen, unfortunately, not as frequently as a lot of the collectors would like.”

Brusokas has established a reputation as the preeminent law enforcement official for cases of fraud in the memorabilia market. He says he finds the work fascinating but not without challenges. Unlike the world of fine art, where provenance is meticulously recorded, the items he deals with are all relatively new, less than 100 years old, meaning the mediums used to produce these objects are still commercially available to fraudsters. Additionally, conclusions of the industry-accepted experts rarely rely on science but rather educated opinions. And on a more basic level, there was a level of trust that Brusokas had to gain with people who have been both subjects and cooperating witnesses.

Despite these challenges, he scored major points for industry accountability in establishing the shill bidding scheme in the Mastro case, a coup de grace of the prosecution. The government found that shill bidding occurred in 2,463 auctions from 2002 to 2009, according to court documents.

Brusokas readily acknowledged what sort of resource the forum sleuthing community helped provide as he was sinking his teeth into the Mastro investigation. (Brusokas would not talk about the current card-trimming scandal and allegations, or the reported federal investigation.)

“I regularly look at internet forums and different collector websites. There’s a lot of good info you can gain by looking at internet forums,” Brusokas said. “I’m no smarter than any one of those people. I just have additional powers that … allow me to dig to that next level.”

The group that has been the most impactful in this effort is colloquially known as BODA, an acronym that stands for Blowout Detective Agency. They are fastidious in their research and dogged in their pursuit of card doctors. Some are keenly protective of their anonymity and are careful not to reveal much, if anything, about their IRL identities. Instead, their calling card is their proficiency. They are revered for their exhaustive work and commitment.

“I don’t think it’s appreciated enough how much detail and time they spend, especially on vintage cards without serial numbers or anything to distinguish the cards besides a printing mark,” said Ryan Tedards, who co-hosts the popular “Sports Card Radio” podcast with his twin brother Colin.

The brothers, who previously owned a brick-and-mortar card shop before pivoting into a web presence and podcasting, single out alleged or convicted offenders in the collecting industry, dubbing each one with a homespun nickname and a list of alleged transgressions.

“They (BODA) might look at hundreds of cards before (finding) one that’s trimmed,” said Tedards. “The work I’ve done is nowhere near (what) they do. They’re uncovering cards trimmed eight years ago. To be able to do that and for how much time that takes, it’s just crazy.”

The online sleuths have occasionally encountered pushback, sometimes from cohorts within the message boards and sometimes from people they scrutinize.

No cease-and-desist orders have been issued, though threads have been shut down at the behest of one card owner’s attorney. Tom Fish, the CEO of Blowout Cards, said he admires the work and fully supports that level of due diligence.

It’s a common sentiment. Most who consider themselves true stakeholders in the hobby appreciate their efforts in forcing accountability.

“Most of us, the honest ones, love them,” Russell said. “The guys who are trying to hide are terrified to be the next ones found out.”

What is known currently about the investigation into PWCC and PSA?

While Huigens is cooperating, it is not immediately clear if PSA is as well. Its CEO, Joe Orlando, did not return calls and the legal representative for PSA’s parent company, Collector’s Universe, did not return a request for comment.  One source with knowledge of the investigation said that the company has been subpoenaed for records.

Multiple people with knowledge of this investigation believe that PSA is the true target of the federal probe.

PSA has a warranty guarantee to clients who have purchased altered cards. The company listed that as a “risk factor” in its 2018 annual financial report. But Orlando has seemingly placed the burden on collectors themselves to avoid being swindled.

In a letter on PSA’s website in July 2019, Orlando says that no third-party system can ever be perfect: “Like most other industries, ours contains a fraction of people who choose to do nothing more than complain about how third-party systems are imperfect, instead of offering feasible or logical ways of making it better. Their expectation of human-based opinion services is simply unattainable. There are realities and limitations to what any third-party service can do.”

At the end of the letter he signs off, not without a dose of irony, “Never get cheated.”

That the scandal reached some of the most influential operators in the industry is what sparked so much attention within the hobby.

“It was the scope of it that was a surprise,” Russell said. “We didn’t realize the guy with more vintage cards than any other in the hobby at PWCC was neck-deep in the situation. At the very least, (PWCC sold) tons and tons of submissions from card doctors. At the worst, (PWCC) was enabling them.”

Buyers who purchased doctored cards were not the only people affected, Russell said. Every other buyer in the marketplace who paid an inflated price because of the shift in the market has a legitimate beef, too. And sellers who have seen honest, unaltered cards devalued also have a legitimate gripe.

Enter the class-action lawsuit filed in April on behalf of lead plaintiff Eric Savoy. The complaint, which names PSA, PWCC and Probstein as defendants, includes allegations of widespread fraud and shill bidding, and goes even further to allege a criminal conspiracy under federal RICO laws.

The racketeering case may be a tough bar to clear — not just in establishing that there’s a criminal enterprise, but also establishing that there’s coordination. But, as one retired FBI agent explained, it’s a useful tool for a prosecutor.

“The power of RICO is once you establish an enterprise, any person who acts or facilitates to assist is liable for the entire RICO statute,” said retired FBI agent Bobby Chacon.

Under RICO, Chacon explained, there’s also a huge civil component that can include loss of assets such as cars, houses and planes. Anything purchased through enterprise activities can be seized under the law’s far-reaching forfeiture rules.

Some in the industry are watching closely.

“I’m interested to see the link between all the people,” Tedards said. “Will they start to point fingers at each other? Does the card trimmer have a relationship with PWCC or is PWCC oblivious? Does the card grader know about these and just not care?”

Others are more curious to see how the criminal investigation will be resolved — even as the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wild variable into the equation. Also in question are the potential impacts on the industry.

Some believe a lack of faith in online transactions may push more people to do business at the kinds of card conventions that used to dominate the collecting scene.

Others are hoping for increased oversight and regulation, with a contingent clamoring for a centralized database that records serial numbers making cards easier to track. Huigens, in his interview with Cardboard Chronicles last year, said that a database was in the works that would be made available to the public. The status of that remains unclear.

PSA and Beckett were contacted about any attempts to catalogue data for tracking purposes, even internally. Beckett offers a public feature that tracks slab serial numbers but, critically, not manufacturer serial numbers. PSA did not respond to inquiries about their internal record-keeping.

Some pin the hopes of purist card collectors on the FBI, the pocketbooks of the class action plaintiff, and the rogue group of investigators scouring the internet for clues and corroboration.

“I’m stunned, by and large, by the hobby’s indifference (to fraud),” Russell said. “There’s a lot of dedicated, knowledgeable collectors up in arms, but boy, if the percentage of collectors vehement about the situation is 10% … I’d be surprised. It’s depressing.”

Back in December 2019, after some coaxing, Kyle convinced the person who listed the Steph Curry 16/199 RPA card to come on his “Wax Museum” podcast. He was gracious in setting the scene with his listeners, asking the seller to share his background in collecting and how his most infamous intersection with the community came to be.

Though Kyle received flak from some on the message boards who felt he had gone easy on the seller, the free-flowing exchange prompted the seller to open up about his motives.

After the card had been “outed,” the seller said he took down the post and re-posted the item as “altered,” explaining that he had merely been trying to show how easy it was to trick the grading companies and submit a doctored card into the marketplace.

The seller sheepishly admitted it wasn’t money that drove him; it was something more abstract: ego, a desire for attention.

His admission offered a rare glimpse into the root of the fraud so many sleuths have worked to excise from the ranks. There was a rare level of contrition and the seller expressed at least a grudging level of respect for the work done by Kyle and others like him.

Though Kyle is proud of his work, there is an almost existential acknowledgement that his successes and discoveries are inextricably linked with another person’s demise.

For this reason, Kyle said he doesn’t seek the spotlight or individual accolades. He just feels compelled to clean up the hobby. “I’m not trying to ruin anyone’s life. I’m not trying to cost anyone money. I’m a hobby enthusiast,” he said.

Kyle first got into his cards because of his affinity for basketball, which he grew up watching with his dad. Both were avid Indiana Pacers fans, and the TV was always on with the din of games in the background. It shaped their dialogue and his collecting helped him connect to friends.

When he moved hundreds of miles away as a teenager, he felt his natural shyness become more pronounced. He quickly discovered that sports had always been his conduit in social settings, and he employed that again as a newcomer to his high school.

That communal affinity for sports, and the nostalgia it provides, is the nexus of his connection to the card collecting community. What he has found, over the years, is that collectors often go through phases of involvement, drifting away and coming back for reasons undefined.

Kyle has a community online and so, when he posts a potential lead or a card he suspects is trimmed, he’ll be met with a barrage of like-minded folks looking to collaborate. They communicate in the forum, but sometimes the discussions move to email or the telephone.

Kyle knows very little about some of the people he talks to frequently. He can tell you usernames and specialty skill-sets, writing tendencies and personality quirks, but he can’t always tell you last names, state of residence, professional endeavors or details about their personal lives.

He speaks daily to one BODA member and received a gift in the mail from him this week. But he could walk past him in the street without recognizing him.

“With anyone you trust, there’s a leap of faith,” he said.

Kyle has posted on the Blowout Forum approximately 6,000 times in six years. Imagine, he asked, if you posted anything anywhere 6,000 times. Written communication has its limits, sure, but there’s a lot you can gather about someone with that much information.

Because live-action sports is on hold, there has been an explosion of interest in the collecting world. New people are flocking to the forums and Kyle feels an obligation to help inform the newcomers about potential fraud and exploitation. It’s a hobby with a steep learning curve and he wants people to benefit from his years of participation.

So his investigative work will continue.

“Honestly, people like a good mystery,” he said.  “I wish this stuff didn’t happen. I don’t celebrate when something new comes out, but there’s a part of that that draws people in … the mystery of it. It’s our own little investigation.”

Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this story, Panini was incorrectly referred to as a card grading company. It is a manufacturer.

(Top photo: K. Schmitt / Fotostand / Associated Press)