See how Pokémon celebrates its 30th anniversary
Pokémon is celebrating its 30th anniversary with worldwide celebrations, new games, and special merchandise in a milestone year for the iconic franchise.
For many longtime Pokemon card collectors, Charizard and Pikachu lived in binders, traded among friends, and even carried to school in backpacks. Once a childhood pastime, card collecting has evolved into a high-stakes global market, lucrative for hobbyists and attractive for counterfeiters.
A new fraud report from Pro Sports Authenticator (PSA) estimates that there will be an estimated $200 million worth of counterfeit and altered trading cards across all categories in 2025, with Pokemon at the forefront of the surge. This number reflects the material detected and intercepted, not the total amount of fraud circulating in the market.
“It’s an eye-opener,” said Ryan Hoge, president of PSA & Collectors.
Hoge said the trend reflects a collision of nostalgia, cultural relevance and growing economic interest in collectibles. That nostalgia coincides with a milestone year for this series. First released in the late 1990s, Pokémon will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2026, with a series of product releases ranging from apparel, collectibles, and other branded gear scheduled to reignite interest across generations of fans.
That overlap has propelled Pokémon into the center of the modern trading card economy.
“In some months, it’s well over 60% of what we’re observing,” Hoge said of the PSA submission. “It dwarfs everything else.”
Fraud patterns also dominate. According to the PSA report, six of the top 10 most counterfeited trading cards are Pokemon cards, highlighting how deeply the franchise lies at the center of demand and deception in the hobby sector. Characters like Charizard, Pikachu, and Gengar are still the most frequently forged and reflect the same ones that card collectors most actively pursue.
“Charizard is like Michael Jordan,” Hoge says. “Everyone knows and wants that character.”
Widespread fraud problem across markets
Overall, counterfeit and altered cards increased by 45.3% in 2025, and the proportion of counterfeit cards in total submissions increased by 250%.
PSA estimates that it stole more than $200 million in potentially fraudulent trading cards last year, based on modeled market values. The company said this figure reflects fraud prevented, not total circulation.
Counterfeiters are also changing tactics. Rather than focusing solely on rare, high-value cards, many companies target lower-value items that are easier to duplicate and more likely to slip past simple inspection. As tactics evolve, PSA says it is adapting its review process across both technology and human grading expertise.
“We’re trying to stay ahead of the bad guys,” Hoge said.
PSA currently processes approximately 20 million cards per year, reflecting the rapid growth in collections and the strain placed on authentication systems.
PSA response
To combat the rise in fraud, PSA relies on a combination of artificial intelligence and human expertise.
The company has built a large reference library of real, altered, and counterfeit cards to train its machine learning system to detect fraud during grading. These tools provide real-time alerts to guide human graders during assessment.
But Hoge said technology alone is not enough.
“Some things can only be physically sensed, such as the feel or smell of a card,” he added.
That expertise is enhanced through structured training within PSA’s internal scoring program, known as Grader University. According to the report, all graders complete months of formal training before grading cards independently, followed by more than 13,000 supervised assessments. The program also includes ongoing guidance on emerging counterfeit trends to keep graders updated on new fraud techniques emerging on the market.
Each submission goes through multiple layers of review, combining AI-assisted screening and experienced scorers trained to identify increasingly sophisticated counterfeits and falsifications.
Why PSA released the report
This is the first year that PSA has released a fraud report, a move that reflects increased transparency as the market expands, Hoge said.
“We want people to go into their collecting journey with their eyes wide open when they buy or sell,” he said.
The company had previously avoided releasing detailed fraud data due to concerns that counterfeiters could use the data, but this year it finally decided that providing the information to collectors outweighed the risks.
The report will be published annually from now on.
For Hoge, the stakes are as personal as they are financial. “When you get scammed, it takes the fun out of it,” he says. “And that’s what collecting should be about.”
Reporter Anthony Thompson can be reached at ajthompson@usatodayco.com or on Twitter @athompsonABJ.
