It all began over lunch and a search for Charizard. The start-up industrial scanning company was looking for ways to market its capabilities and a brainstorming session led to the idea of scanning packs of Pokemon cards. Compared to airplane parts, scanning packs of cards was child’s play.
“It was like a revelation of ‘Holy cow! Not only did this work, but it’s extremely obvious,’” Irwin said. “That was really the extent of what we thought. So hey, let’s throw it up as a case study.”
Irwin said he posted the imagery and results on his LinkedIn page in late June, where it received “140 or 150 likes and tons of comments.” The company had no idea what it stumbled upon.
“Immediately we were like well nobody’s gonna be paying for our labor to be able to do this,” Irwin said. “But I think that that was a naive thought because we didn’t understand the true value of these cards.”
The values of sports and Pokemon cards have grown exponentially in recent years, with regular sales in the six-figure range and some going well into the millions (the highest sale to date for a Pokemon card was nearly $5.3 million in 2022 and the highest sale for a sports card was $12.6 million, also in 2022).
This information has been making its rounds again but in more mainstream locations. From what ive seen, nothing new to our earlier conversations but that people are likely using the service still. Overall comments in other articles are mostly confused or unclear exactly what the benefits are. Hope being more seen can lead to more tamper resistant solutions.
Thanks for sharing. Interesting read. To be honest, I’m surprised that it took all the way until 2024 for this technology to be utilized. Nothing in the article indicates that only recent improvements in CT technology have made this possible. Only that the equipment is so expensive that may exclude start-ups.
Why did it take until now for this to happen? Did the product become valuable enough when it was worth it? Or has a cultural shift occurred in the collectible space, where people are more concerned with monetization? Are people driven to be more competitive to achieve their collecting ends?
Anyway, as they said, this practice is likely here to stay and will likely affect sealed product. Obviously sealed is still valuable. It makes me think that there was a sweet spot for collecting, when there was value and growth, but not in excess. We are fully surrounded in excess.
On a positive note, it is interesting that they offer a service where they verify the hits are in the box, but they don’t disclose the hits. That is authentication.
I wonder if its because the intersection of someone with the access and necessary knowledge to operate a ct scanner, and is deep into pokemon is rare. From talking to a few people who were trying out the service, it still sounds unrefined. I think people will read this article and incorrectly assume you can just push a button and see a charizard.
Its interesting to read “sealed is still valuable” because it makes me wonder if in the future people wont buy sealed because of fear that its been scanned similar to people that claim something hasnt been weighed given that it ever gets to a point where its cheap to have our own mini ct scanners.
This service would have to be as streamlined as submitting to PSA, both in quality and cost. Even then, it still just doesn’t make sense for many sets. Also, if pack scanning isn’t even streamlined, boxes remain unaffected. Unless there is an exponential short term improvement in quality and cost, ct scanning will remain a niche application.
I gotcha. I was mainly referring to a point where it isnt a service, and more of “if everyone could do it” kinda trope. Wont happen anytime soon, but wouldnt mind it either tbh.
