The numbers are in, and they're worse than most collectors realize. PSA's 2025 annual fraud report documented more than $200 million in projected fraudulent collectible value intercepted across all submissions — a 45.3% increase from the year before. Pokémon card counterfeits surged 125% in a single year. And those are only the fakes that were caught.
For context: PSA processed 15.34 million card submissions in 2024 alone. That's 15 million individual authentication decisions, each one a potential vector for fraud. What happens after those decisions is where SlabProof begins.
The Three Fraud Categories Driving the Crisis
1. Cert Cloning
The most sophisticated and damaging form of slab fraud. A fraudster acquires an authentic PSA, BGS, or CGC cert number — either by photographing a real slab, purchasing a cheap real card with a valuable cert, or scraping registry databases. They then produce a counterfeit slab using that cert number, with a fake or lower-grade card inside.
The buyer checks the cert. It returns a real result. They see a real grade for a real card. They purchase a fraud. The grading company's registry has no way to flag this — because the cert number is real. Only provenance tracking can catch it.
2. Reseal Operations
Lower-tech but extremely common. An authentic slab is cracked open, the card is removed and replaced with a counterfeit or lower-grade version, and the case is re-glued using the original authentic label. From the outside, everything looks legitimate. The cert matches. The label is real. The hologram is real. The card is not.
Tells exist — seam irregularities, slight label misalignment, plastic that feels subtly wrong — but most buyers aren't looking for them, and sophisticated operations have gotten very good at concealing them.
3. Outright Fakes
Full counterfeit slabs — fake plastic, fake labels, fake holograms — have become alarmingly sophisticated. A January 2026 thread on CoinTalk documented a fake PCGS Morgan dollar slab with no hologram and a cert number pointing to a completely different coin on the official registry. The Collectors.com community maintains running documentation of fake BGS, PSA, and CGC slabs with photographic evidence.
“Both slabs have the same cert number. Only one is real. Can you tell which one you bought?”
Where Fraud Concentrates
Not all cards are equally targeted. Fraud concentrates at the intersection of high value and high recognition. The most commonly reported fraud targets in collector communities:
- —1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan RC (PSA 9 and 10)
- —Luka Doncic Prizm Rookie (PSA 10, BGS 9.5)
- —Base Set Charizard (PSA 10)
- —1st Edition Charizard (any high grade)
- —Key rookie cards (LeBron, Brady, Mantle) in PSA 10
- —Vintage Pokémon holos in high grade
These cards share a profile: widely recognized, command large premiums for high grades, and their cert numbers are easily findable through public registry lookups. That combination makes them ideal fraud targets.
The Live Commerce Problem
Whatnot and other live auction platforms have introduced a new fraud vector that deserves specific attention. In live sales, buyers make purchasing decisions based on a few seconds of camera time. A seller can briefly show a slab at a flattering angle, obscure label details in the framing, and move quickly. By the time the buyer notices something's wrong, the transaction is complete.
What Provenance Changes
The fundamental gap in the current ecosystem is what happens after a card leaves the grading company. Authentication at inception is not the same as trust across a lifetime of transactions. SlabProof's provenance layer creates the chain of custody that grading companies were never designed to provide.
Bottom Line
Cert verification tells you a card was real when it was graded. Provenance verification tells you the slab in front of you is the same one. Those are fundamentally different questions, and only one of them protects you at the point of sale.