Industrial Inspection & Consulting just wanted to illustrate the power and precision of its CT scanning technology when it first peered inside a sealed pack of Pokémon cards last month.
Now, weeks removed from those first X-rays, Industrial Inspection has added trading cards to its list of CT scanning services, and the collecting community has been split by the unknown, yet inevitable, impact the technology will have on the secondary market.
After telling cllct earlier this month it had no interest in pursuing a card scanning service, the company pivoted earlier this week.
For $75, Industrial Inspection will scan sealed packs of trading cards and provide the viewing program needed to analyze the contents. The ability to scan sealed boxes could be added to the service as early as this week.
An industry source with knowledge of the process told cllct it questioned how widespread the technology will be used, with its impact likely limited to high-end products. The source also questioned if collectors using the service will easily see what they hope to see without prior experience working with the technology.
According to Industrial Inspection’s general manager Keith Irwin, the company had 10 requests to scan packs within the first two hours of the case study being posted to YouTube. Since news of the technology spread, traffic to the company website has increased more than 17,000 percent.
“We started to get a lot of interest,” Irwin told cllct. “I’m not just talking a lot — I’m saying a massive spike from individuals, from collectors, from auction houses. So, this is not just a small thing.
"It seems like everybody is mad, but also everybody wants to be involved. And we can’t put the worms back into the can. It is what it is. And if we don’t offer this, somebody else will.”
Irwin declined to provide additional details due to non-disclosure agreements, but he confirmed the majority of requests have simply asked what was possible. Some collectors have heavily speculated group breakers could use this technology to hold the best boxes, while selling the rest to customers. Others have wondered if this technology could be used for legitimate reasons such as the authentication of sealed vintage boxes.
So far, the motivations behind the requests aren’t clear, and that’s what has the collecting community concerned.
Prior to recent case studies in June and July, the majority of the collecting community had no idea X-ray technology could be used this way. Soon after discovering it was possible at all, it became clear that access to the technology through medical or academic settings wasn’t the challenge many expected. Now, it can be done for just $75.
While a large portion of the trading card community has immediately condemned the process, Irwin and Industrial Inspection believe it’s important to offer the service to all — not just what has appeared to be ultra high-end collectors operating in secret.
“Our goal with this moving forward and evaluating as a team how to offer this service, is that we're trying to be the good guys in something that is not going to be going away,” Irwin said. “And so I want the volume of work, but I also want this to be accessible to everybody.”
Whether or not the service should be accessible at all is up for debate, and Industrial Inspection is more than aware the service is controversial. Navigating how to ethically use it has been difficult.
Working with auction houses or authenticators could be viewed positively by the hobby, but that could also be viewed as gatekeeping the technology from collectors who might only want to confirm what they already own is real. It’s hard to see where positive use-cases end and negative ones begin.
“The grand question is: If we don't do it, what happens?” Irwin asked. “And the answer is, if we don't do it, somebody will. Somebody else will do it, and we will not be a participant in something groundbreaking, right? And we are electing to be a participant because we know that we are a good actor in every way that we can be.”
Good actors or not, the trading card community is anticipating an impact on the secondary market, especially at the high-end level.
At current pricing, scanning packs or boxes of low- and mid-tier products doesn’t make much sense. Fake packs and boxes have long plagued the markets for vintage sports cards, early Pokémon releases, and high-end ultra-modern sets, however, and X-ray technology could be another weapon fraudsters could deploy.
It’s currently unclear what steps major trading card manufacturers have taken to protect customers, and requests for comment by cllct weren’t immediately returned by Panini America and Topps.
Upper Deck issued a short statement to cllct Thursday.
"The team at Upper Deck is aware of the matter and is monitoring the situation closely," Upper Deck wrote in the statement. "Protecting our customers and giving everyone the opportunity to collect the best cards and memorabilia is, and always has been a top priority."
According to Irwin, Industrial Inspection could survive without scanning trading cards — though it certainly presents an appealing revenue stream — and a simple solution for card manufacturers could be using dosimeter stickers that will change colors when exposed to radiation. Boxes could still be weighed and manipulated in other ways, but a tamper-proof sticker could show if a box was scanned.
For now, Industrial Inspection plans to move forward with card scanning and box scanning when it becomes available. The company could also potentially scan encapsulated sealed packs for collectors who might want to crack and open.
Regardless of what services the company provides, Irwin knows that the ethical and moral implications will be something Industrial must grapple with. The company website writes, “Pandora’s box is open,” and collectors so far have agreed.
“Obviously, we have hit a pressure sensor here for these people,” Irwin said. “When I take a step back and wonder why, and I realize that people have built their incomes and their lives around these industries, yeah, it makes me question if what we've done is the right thing. But like the other times I've said it, if we didn't come forward and reveal this and start doing it as a service, people would be doing it in secret.
“An even larger market of people would be taken advantage of and these people would find other ways. So, we are in an interesting position where we are doing the wrong thing if we don't do anything, and we're doing the wrong thing if we do something.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.