Trading card counterfeits are rising. The size of the problem is not.

According to WBRC (Gray Media), a booming market for trading cards is fueling a surge in counterfeits and smash and grabs. The report describes collectors chasing cards for sports figures like Shohei Ohtani and Patrick Mahomes, alongside fantasy cards such as Pokémon's Mega Charizard and Snorlax, or Magic the Gathering's Sol Ring.

The InvestigateTV analysis draws on court records, news archives and an unofficial database tracking fake or stolen cards. It found cases of counterfeit cards sold for thousands of dollars that were hard to detect, thieves taking high-dollar cards directly from local shops and conventions, and thefts of cards from the U.S. Mail.

Three kinds of loss, one shared category

A counterfeit card sold for thousands is a fraud loss. A card lifted from a shop shelf is a burglary. A card pulled from a mail package is a shipping-chain theft. The report treats all three as part of one surge, but they are not the same crime, and they do not call for the same defense. A buyer checking authenticity before paying will not stop a smash and grab. A shop installing better locks will not stop a mail carrier theft.

What the report does not say is how big the counterfeit problem actually is. There is no total dollar figure, no count of confirmed fake sales, and no comparison to prior years. The database behind the analysis is described as unofficial, tracking fake or stolen cards, but its size, its criteria for inclusion, and who maintains it are not given.

What the source leaves open

Court records and news archives can show that cases exist. They cannot show how common those cases are relative to the total volume of trading card sales happening now. A market can produce headline-grabbing thefts at conventions while remaining, in proportion, mostly free of fraud, or it can be riddled with counterfeits that never make it to court. The report does not distinguish between those two possibilities.

It also does not say what a collector or a shop owner can currently do to check a card before buying, beyond describing counterfeits as hard to detect. No authentication method, no grading service, no verification step appears in the source.

That absence points to the real question the report leaves unanswered: out of the total volume of trading cards bought and sold right now, what share are actually counterfeit or stolen, and who has the data to answer that with a number rather than a collection of cases?