We’re just going to let this week’s stories speak for themselves… SO, the world's largest grading company shut its doors to budget collectors. A man brought a chainsaw to a Pokemon heist. And Brazilian police intercepted a bus full of fake World Cup stickers before they hit the streets. None of these stories are normal. All of them happened in the same seven days.

This week:

💰 Victor Wembanyama's Prizm Black 1/1 sells for $5.11 million
🏷️ PSA pauses all Value-tier grading as backlog hits 10 million cards
🪚 A Florida Man used a chainsaw to steal $12,000 in Pokemon cards
⚽ Brazilian police seized 200,000 fake Panini World Cup stickers
🔥 Heatseekers: Top upcoming releases

Let’s take a look 🤣

Also, send us feedback and ideas on how to improve by replying to this email!

Victor Wembanyama's 2023-24 Panini Prizm Black 1/1, graded PSA 10, sold privately for $5.11 million through Fanatics Collect. That makes it the fourth-highest known sale for any NBA card, the most expensive non-autographed NBA card ever, and only the third sports card to cross $5 million in 2026. His previous record was $860,100 at a Goldin auction in February 2025. This one multiplied that by six.

No licensed Wembanyama autographed rookies exist because his exclusive deal sits with Fanatics, which means the Prizm Black 1/1 is effectively the current top of the mountain. The sale landed during the Spurs' Western Conference Finals run, with Wemby averaging 25 points and 11.5 rebounds per game this season. He's 22 years old. SI Collectibles noted he's now in the $5 million club alongside Jordan, LeBron, and Mantle.

Sponsored by Masterworks

A single evening only brought in $1 billion at auction one other time, Paul Allen’s estate in 2022.

Christie’s May 18 evening sale was headlined by:

Obvious outliers, but the evening capped a spring auction season that totaled $2.5 billion (roughly 2x last year). This follows a Q1’26 that saw the postwar contemporary art market grow 23.1%.

Masterworks offers investors the opportunity to invest in blue-chip contemporary and post-war art. Since 2017, it has offered over 500 artworks and raised over $1 billion in total investments.

29 exits to-date have delivered net annualized returns like 16.5%, 17.6% and 17.8% on sold works held over 12 months.

Join 70,000+ members in adding art to their portfolios.

Skip the waitlist here.

Skip the waitlist here.

^{*According to Masterworks data. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Investing involves risk. See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd}

Please support our sponsors!

PSA announced it is temporarily pausing all Value-tier grading services effective June 2, shutting down Value Bulk, Value, Value Plus, and Value Max. Everything below $79.99 per card is gone until further notice. The reason: a 20% spike in submissions pushed the active queue to nearly 10 million cards.

Since PSA's May 14 investment announcement, 1.6 million cards flooded in as collectors rushed to submit before the gates closed. PSA is investing $200 million in infrastructure and plans to hire roughly 1,000 new employees by year's end. They're also extending all Collectors Club memberships for free and launching a public backlog tracker so customers can see the same numbers management sees. The target is to cut the backlog to 5 million cards within four months. Until then, budget grading is offline.

According to investigators, Clayton Warren, 33, of West Palm Beach showed up at Collection Realm in Lake Park, Florida shortly after 1:30 a.m. on May 21 and threw a rock at the storefront window. The hurricane glass held. He came back ninety minutes later with a battery-powered chainsaw and cut a triangular hole through it. He grabbed $12,000 worth of Pokemon cards, and left blood on the glass on his way out.

Palm Beach County deputies collected the DNA, ran his plates through a license plate reader, and arrested him at his West Palm Beach address. He's been charged with felony burglary and grand theft. Kotaku featured the story under its ongoing "Pokemon Crime Spree" series, and the AP wire picked it up nationally.

And with the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicking off June 11 across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the counterfeit market is already running hot. Brazilian police seized approximately 200,000 fake Panini World Cup stickers hidden inside a bus in Nova Iguaçu, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The operation was carried out by Brazil's Department for the Suppression of Crimes Against Intellectual Property.

The 2026 album requires 980 stickers to complete, which at retail prices adds up fast, and that margin is exactly what the fakers are chasing. CBC ran video coverage of the bust. Just know… if you're collecting the album this summer, buy from authorized retailers only 😅

The world of collectibles is wide and deep, and there’s a constant stream of new releases. Here are some of the big ones that are coming up:

So… a 21-year-old's rookie card sold for $5.11 million with no autograph on it, just scarcity and a playoff run. PSA locked out every collector spending under $80 per card, and the hobby's largest grading queue hit eight figures. A man tried a rock, failed, and came back with a chainsaw. And a bus in Brazil was carrying enough fake stickers to fill 200 World Cup albums.

The collectibles industry is straining at the seams because of sheer demand. Grading companies can't keep up. Counterfeiters can't resist the margins. And the prices at the top keep rewriting what anyone thought was possible. But we don’t think that’s a crisis, we think it’s side effects of a market that has real legs to stand on and that’s growing super fast.

See you next week!