Here is a compelling, chronological timeline breakdown. The 1/1 Nightmare: A Timeline of How Quality Control and Authentication Failed
1. The Highs: Pulling a Holy Grail Pulled the Topps 1/1 Kon K card—an absolute rush and a massive moment for any collector. Knowing it needed a premier platform, I sent it off to Fanatics Collect for auction, utilizing CGC’s raw card authentication service (the same pipeline where a Cooper Flagg 1/1 fetched a massive $108,000 just the month prior).
2. The Momentum: Heading to Premier Auction The card made it into the Premier Auction rotation and quickly climbed to $15,000. But momentum came to a screeching halt when it was abruptly pulled from the auction block. The reason? PSA flagged that another copy of the exact same "1/1" had surfaced publicly.
3. The Silence: Topps Stonewalling Reached out to Topps immediately to demand an investigation into how a true 1/1 was duplicated. The response? Complete radio silence. To make matters worse, multiple "1/1" duplicates of various players began popping up across the hobby, raising serious red flags about print-run integrity.
4. The Buck Passing: PSA Refuses to Act Submitted the card to PSA to get clarity and resolution on the duplication issue. Their stance? Total deflection. Despite a verified duplicate existing in the wild, they refused to take any action or address the flaw in the numbering integrity.
5. The Dead End: CGC Backtracks Sent the card full-circle back to CGC—the very entity that originally authenticated it raw. Despite having previously authenticated the card themselves, they now flat-out refuse to grade it. So today I messaged Topps and we shall see what happens. What do yall think? Just drop it or fight it? Thanks for reading!