The theft of thousands of sports cards from a FedEx truck at the PSA facility in California has enforced the importance of collectors getting their cards and collectibles insured.
By Greg Bates⋅
NOV 12, 2026
The heist of a FedEx truck packed with thousands of graded cards outside of PSA’s headquarters on Oct. 13 has raised many valid questions throughout the industry.
Was this an inside job? Was something of this magnitude inevitably going to happen with all the money changing hands in the hobby? What needs to change to ensure an incident like this doesn’t occur again?
One monumental question being asked is: Who is liable to recuperate all of the money lost by customers who submitted items to PSA but were stolen while in FedEx’s possession?
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As the president of an insurance company that handles policies for sports cards and collectibles, Thomas Finkelmeier Jr. sees this massive robbery through a different lens than a typical collector.
“I immediately think of all the various contracts involved,” said Finkelmeier of Finkelmeier Insurance Agency, Inc., in Wapakoneta, Ohio. “There’s plenty of people, saying, ‘Oh, that’s FedEx’s fault.’ Well, clearly, they’ve never read FedEx’s terms and conditions. FedEx, they had a locked truck and who would have thought it would be left long enough that somebody could get two and a half pallets out, but they did. But their terms and conditions are pretty robust and have been tested in not just sports memorabilia, but thousands and thousands of claims. They don’t have a tremendous amount of exposure.
“Some people are speculating, ‘Oh, well PSA ships so much, they might have some special arrangement with FedEx.’ Probably not. PSA has coverage, but their coverage to the individual who owns the card that’s being graded is controlled by the grading agreement, which, those of us that have graded a PSA card know how rigorous that is. You have a declared value, and that’s what you get.”
Finkelmeier noted that the pallets that were stolen off the FedEx truck contained somewhere in the range of 250 individual packages. So, there may be 250 different people who had consigned their cards to be graded by PSA and each one would have a different agreement.
“As we all know, why do we send our cards to be graded? A raw card is worth one thing and depending upon the grade PSA assigns, suddenly it’s worth a lot more,” Finkelmeier said. “But that’s kind of like taxing unrealized capital gains, if you haven’t sold it. Yeah, it’s worth more, but your original agreement was we insured your PSA ’52 Mantle for whatever you said up front, $25,000. Even though theoretically you could sell it for more, I doubt PSA’s going to honor any difference.”
REACHING A FAIR AGREEMENT
In a written statement PSA shared just over a week after the FedEx robbery, the industry’s largest third-party authentication company assured collectors and dealers who were affected that they would honor each individual contract and waive all of the grading fees.
On Nov. 11, a few collectors whose submissions were part of the heist posted on social media that PSA had reached out to them with a settlement offer. Kevin Rashidi said on X that he received fair market value on all of his stolen cards and a full refund on his grading fees.
Coastal Card Collector responded on that same X thread that he was also given fair market value and the grading fees were recouped. Both collectors thought PSA’s offers were fair.
However, some customers who were affected by the massive theft may end up unsatisfied with their payout from PSA, depending on the grades they received and their potential loss.
“Since their cost of grading is based on the value of the card—and in my experience, and I’ve done it myself—you tend to kind of lowball the value, because you don’t want to pay $3,999 to have a card graded when you can get another card graded for $299,” Finkelmeier said. “So, people, not expecting this loss, probably lowballed their numbers. And that’s going to restrict their potential recoupment from PSA. Then they may or may not have individual insurance, too. So, there’s a whole lot of messiness here.”
Deciding to pay or not to pay for insurance is certainly a double-edged sword. Collectors may not want to pay up front for insurance, because they are hoping they don’t have to use it. But then if a lowball figure is marked down for the declared value in a PSA submission, they’re out of luck if their items are stolen or damaged.
“It’s no different than the deductibles on your personal car insurance, for example,” Finkelmeier said. “You can either pay a larger annual premium for insurance to have super low deductibles for the possibility that you have a claim or you can carry very high deductibles to have the lowest possible insurance costs. But if you hit that deer, now you’re out $1,000 instead of $250 or $500, because you wanted to save on the premium. It’s hard to say that the individual consumer’s choice is an incorrect one.”
New York-based WAX Collect insures some of the biggest dealers and repack companies in the industry. CEO Rich Vinhais guides collectors and companies to make sure they are covered for any sort of catastrophic event.
“A lot of people care about insurance only after the fact, and they’re not thinking that far ahead, because they’re effectively trying to make as much margin as they can on their business now,” Vinhais said. “So, the people that are running their business as a business, those that are the most successful are the ones that are actually preparing for that. So, a lot of these shops, a lot of these businesses are wildly underinsured by design and now that it’s gone more mainstream and people start understanding the value, they’re an easier target to hit. It’s not that these shops have the necessary safeguards in place on the whole. So, they end up becoming easy marks for a lot of these companies and these shops. But those that have invested more heavily into protecting the assets that they have, they tend to do a little bit better with that.”
Vinhais is happy to offer insurance advice to dealers/hobby shops and collectors on how to stay protected in this highly lucrative sports cards and collectibles industry.
“I think they need to look at risk management not as a cost center, but more of a strategic differentiator, that’s the way I would advise them,” Vinhais said. “Those that are actually planning for the downside are those that are thinking further than a few steps ahead. So, my guidance to them is to truly understand the liquidity, the assets, the processes they have in place, be thoughtful on how they’re being governed and get the appropriate independent guidance on how to make sure that you’re protected at scale and over time.
“Businesses are always fluctuating up and down through bull and bear markets, that’s just part of it. But the underlying assets are still stores of value. If you’re not protecting those, especially when it’s risk in transit, the most significant risk that’s generally in play are items that are shipping.”
COVERAGE FROM ALL ANGLES
Let’s present a fictitious scenario. Say a collector sends a submission to PSAs. Let’s also say that said collector has individual insurance through a carrier such as Finkelmeier Insurance Agency
How does this play out in terms of monetary recuperation?
“Whether you’re talking about FedEx’s declared value in their contract of carriage or the PSA contract where you put something in their care custody control, neither of those are insurance,” Finkelmeier said. “For example, in FedEx’s case, if you get into their terms and conditions, the section on their liability for the shipped goods even says in parentheses at the top, ‘Not insurance.’ They will agree to cover declared value of a certain amount, but there are sub-limits there. So, their standard declared value is $100 that they’ll compensate you for a lost package. Then they have subcategories, collectibles, they’ll go up to $1,000, which is better than it used to be. Fifteen years ago, they specifically said they didn’t cover sports memorabilia.”
Finkelmeier said FedEx would refund the declared value of an item, because a customer can’t collect more than $1,000 for an individual item, per shipment for trading cards or sports memorabilia. That’s if it’s a package.
“If you use one of their envelopes or what they call the FedEx Pak, their limit for those is $500. So, you can’t collect much from FedEx,” Finkelmeier said. “Now, in this case, 250 packages, there’s $250,000 of potential coverage there.”
PSA is also up front about what it will cover when it comes to stolen, lost or damaged items while in its possession.
“PSA is also very clear, they’re not providing insurance,” Finkelmeier said. “They have an agreed amount of liability, based on the value you declared when you signed up for the service. You put in there what you say it’s worth, and that’s how they wash their hands of any increase in value after grading. You picked the value, not PSA. Again, they’ve lost cards and had issues in the past too, so their contract has been court-tested. You’re not likely to get more than what you agreed to.
“So, then lastly, you come back to if you have insurance. Well, it depends what your personal insurance says. If you have a policy that’s a blanket policy, that’s a good thing, because otherwise if you only have listed items and you didn’t list the item you sent to PSA, well, it’s not included in your insurance. So, you need a blanket policy or you need to have the item you sent in for grading already on your insurance policy.”
That is the first step for a collector or dealer who is covered through individual insurance.
“Then, the question is, does your policy allow for an increase in value?” Finkelmeier said. “So, if I send in an ungraded ’52 Mantle, it might be worth six grand, 10 grand, 15 grand, but once they crunch it in a case and say, oh, this came back a PSA 5, well, now it’s worth a quarter million dollars or more. How do you capture that increase when most policies for sports memorabilia have a per item cap for unscheduled coverage? In other words, if you don’t have the item listed on file with us, the typical one we’ll see in a lot of the policies we deal with is $25,000. So, if it was a $10,000 estimated card value for the ungraded grade, then you’re fine shipping it out. But once PSA grades it a 5 and all of a sudden, boom, it’s like printing money, now it’s worth $200,000 or more. Now you have a problem.
“If you received your grade online as PSA does you get an email that your grading is done and you check. Your first call is to us, ‘Now, I need this covered on the return shipment.’ You need to call and have us list that item so that we know it’s in transit. It’s now a higher value and it’s gone beyond the unscheduled limit.”
Finkelmeier added that depending on the collector and their policy, typically the transit coverage is a percentage, say 25%, of the person’s total collection. So, if there is a $100,000 policy in place, the collector may only have a $25,000 shipping limit.
Individual insurance policy holders need to be fully aware of all the nuances and be quick to act accordingly and adjust coverage appropriately.
“There’s a lot of moving pieces,” Finkelmeier said.
The PSA/FedEx heist is an extraordinary anomaly, noted Vinhais. This incident can serve as a harsh reality for the companies and collectors involved that they need to make sure they have plans in place for a worst-case scenario.
“This is a true exception and there will be litigation. There will be consequences once they get to the heart of all the details,” Vinhais said. “I would not look at this as the standard. I would look at it as a bit of a wakeup of what a worst-case scenario could be. It really is a reminder to just make sure that you’re thinking through the risk management side of your business.”
Baseball cardsFedEx robberyPSASports MemorabiliaStolen cards
Greg BatesAuthor
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