Hobby Article — Cardboard Police

October 02, 2026

Coinbase Says "Vault It or Ship It." The Pokémon Pack Platforms It Would Join Publish a Third Option: Sell It Back

On Sept. 28, Coinbase posted five short lines to X: "Your binder is about to get a major upgrade. Rip packs on your phone. Every pull backed by a real, physical card. Vault it or ship it. Soon on Coinbase." The text never names a card game. The imag...

Hobby Article Pokemon PSA Hobby Trends

CASE #0353 Informational

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October 01, 2026

TikTok's Surprise Set Rules Got a Number Back: At Least a 5% Chance at the Top Item, Dated Sept. 29

Random team breaks, the break format most often compared to a lottery, can now run on TikTok Shop only inside a Surprise Set, a randomized sales feature TikTok itself controls. On Sept. 29, two gambling-trade outlets reported that TikTok had stripped...

Hobby Article Lawsuits Hobby Trends

CASE #0350 Informational

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September 30, 2026

CGC Opened Grading Drop-Offs at 20 FYE Stores — Not One of Them in a City on PSA's Lids List

CGC has put its grading intake behind the counter at 20 FYE stores. The announcement came on September 25, four days after ICv2 reported that PSA had done the same thing with 50 Lids stores, a program this blog covered as CASE #0335. Two major card g...

Hobby Article PSA Grading Hobby Trends

CASE #0347 Informational

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September 28, 2026

Beckett Shut Base and Standard Grading Again Less Than Two Weeks After Reopening — and This Time There's No Date

Beckett has stopped taking new Base and Standard grading submissions again, less than two weeks after it reopened them. This time the notice carries no reopening date. It carries a policy instead. The company's grading FAQ, still live on September 2...

Hobby Article Grading Hobby Health

CASE #0344 Informational

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September 25, 2026

The Flagg 1/1 Sold for $8.04 Million — and $4.54 Million of It Was Bid After 9 p.m.

At 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, the one-of-one Cooper Flagg Rookie Debut Patch Autograph stood at $3.5 million in Fanatics Collect's September Premier Auction. By about 2 a.m. Friday it had sold for $8.04 million. That's 83 bids, and $4.54 million add...

Hobby Article Basketball Topps Fanatics Million Dollar Cards

CASE #0341 Informational

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September 24, 2026

PSA's App Now Tracks Cards It Has Never Graded — the Third Move in Ten Days Aimed at the Decision to Submit

PSA's app will now keep track of a card PSA has never touched. On September 23 the company rolled out a reworked Collection experience that accepts ungraded cards alongside slabs, puts a running estimated value on the whole pile, and lets a collector...

Hobby Article PSA Grading Hobby Trends

CASE #0338 Informational

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September 23, 2026

PSA Took Its Grading Intake Into 50 Lids Stores — and the Counter Staff Handle the Shipping

PSA has started taking grading submissions off the mail truck and onto a mall counter. The company's new program, called PSA GO, lets a customer walk into a participating Lids store, hand a Lids employee their cards, and let the store handle everythi...

Hobby Article PSA Grading Hobby Trends

CASE #0335 Informational

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September 22, 2026

A John Cena One-of-One Sold for $329,400 — and the Three Biggest Wrestling-Card Sales on Record Are Graded 7, 8 and 9

On September 20 a single trading card of John Cena sold at Goldin for $329,400 — $270,000 on the hammer, plus the house's 22 percent buyer's premium. Goldin announced the result as "The All-Time Highest Public Sale for any Wrestling Card." The card ...

Hobby Article PSA Market Analysis Topps Non-Sports

CASE #0332 Informational

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September 21, 2026

A $2.2 Million Black Lotus Was Only Third in an $11.3 Million TCG Week — and Heritage Moved an Illustrator for $5 Million

A 1993 Magic: The Gathering Alpha Black Lotus in a PSA Gem Mint 10 holder sold for $2,208,200 on September 19. It was the third-biggest publicly tracked trading card game sale of the week. Sports Illustrated's Lucas Mast, working from Card Ladder sa...

Hobby Article Pokemon Market Analysis Million Dollar Cards Non-Sports

CASE #0329 Informational

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September 17, 2026

The 1951 Photograph Behind the 1952 Topps Mantle Sold for $3 Million — the Card It Produced Still Has Only Three PSA 10s

The picture came first. Everything the hobby has spent seventy-four years grading and reselling is a reproduction of it — and the original has now been given a price of its own. A 1951 photograph of Mickey Mantle, the image Topps used to build his 1...

Hobby Article Baseball PSA Topps Vintage Million Dollar Cards

CASE #0326 Informational

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the cardboard chronicle

Tagged: Hobby Article

Coinbase Says "Vault It or Ship It." The Pokémon Pack Platforms It Would Join Publish a Third Option: Sell It Back

TikTok's Surprise Set Rules Got a Number Back: At Least a 5% Chance at the Top Item, Dated Sept. 29

CGC Opened Grading Drop-Offs at 20 FYE Stores — Not One of Them in a City on PSA's Lids List

Beckett Shut Base and Standard Grading Again Less Than Two Weeks After Reopening — and This Time There's No Date

The Flagg 1/1 Sold for $8.04 Million — and $4.54 Million of It Was Bid After 9 p.m.

PSA's App Now Tracks Cards It Has Never Graded — the Third Move in Ten Days Aimed at the Decision to Submit

PSA Took Its Grading Intake Into 50 Lids Stores — and the Counter Staff Handle the Shipping

A John Cena One-of-One Sold for $329,400 — and the Three Biggest Wrestling-Card Sales on Record Are Graded 7, 8 and 9

A $2.2 Million Black Lotus Was Only Third in an $11.3 Million TCG Week — and Heritage Moved an Illustrator for $5 Million

The 1951 Photograph Behind the 1952 Topps Mantle Sold for $3 Million — the Card It Produced Still Has Only Three PSA 10s