Among the hobby’s unwritten rules, few practices are as frowned upon by collectors as pack searching.
While the practice is far from new, a twist involving the use of X-ray technology to see inside sealed packs and boxes was recently revealed, and it could rock the trading card industry.
Before last week, the overwhelming majority of the collecting community had no knowledge that X-ray technology could be used to peer inside boxes of packs. But following three separate videos showcasing the process over the last month, some collectors now feel their hobby — a hobby that has a long track record of deceit and fraud — is now immediately exposed to a new threat without a clear solution.
It’s hard to know whether any crime has been committed using X-ray technology so far — and the simple use of X-rays to see inside a box isn’t illegal. But the path toward fraud isn’t hard to plot and could arrive swiftly and with wide-reaching ramifications.
With the sports memorabilia market projected to reach a $227 billion valuation by 2032, any breaker, retailer or individual heavily invested in the category could be tempted to use the technology for nefarious gain.
Any trading card business that operates within the high-end market or with significant volume could likely use the technology to keep the biggest hits for itself and leave its customers with the leftovers.
It’s currently unclear when the technology was first used for pack searching, but the average hobbyist was likely introduced to the concept last week when a YouTube video showed a CT scanner being used to see inside a pack of Pokemon cards.
Posted by Ahron Wayne on Tuesday, the video shows a CT scanner being used to peek through multiple layers of cards and see a holographic hit. Details are far from clear, but a significant amount of image processing revealed enough to know whether the pack contained a hit.
An applications engineer who works with X-ray technology professionally, Wayne said he purchased two CT scanners on eBay last summer for $1,500. Following three months of repairs and work on another project, Wayne attempted to answer the question all collectors have: What’s in the pack?
“I think it's going to be possible in a couple years to see every card in the pack,” Wayne told cllct in an exclusive interview this weekend. “So, you can pull a 1940s baseball pack and be able to tell every single thing that's in there, not just special cards or holographics. I think it’s possible.”
Wayne’s research provided a resounding answer, but it also left trading card collectors with a number of questions — most notably when this technology first entered the hobby and whether or not it has been used with ill intent.
An Instagram video from user “dtaoooooo” might provide insight into both questions.
Originally posted on June 25, the video shows X-ray technology being used to view the contents of what appear to be two cases of Panini’s ultra high-end Flawless Basketball. Though the scan doesn’t show exact details such as player faces or any lettering on the cards, card attributes like patches are visible with limited detail.
Of the cards shown, one appears to be a highly-coveted Logoman card — a card that features a jersey’s full NBA logo and commands extremely high prices on the secondary market.
“I hereby disclose a secret that is clear in the blind-box industry, so that consumers can see how to 'unbox without damage' through CT scanner technology, merchants are unscrupulous offline to find logoman‘s speculative way without loss!” the caption reads.
A direct message request from cllct to the user wasn’t immediately answered, but the post, initially seen by a limited number of collectors, suggests CT scanning has already been part of the trading card hobby.
Of all the boom-or-bust products that a collector would want to see inside ahead of time, few could provide more value than Flawless Basketball, and the technology apparently already has been used there.
“It's really hard to know whether anybody was already doing this,” Wayne said. “I figured it out with a 20-year old machine, so it's been possible for decades.”
If the use of X-ray technology has been used to examine trading cards, it has been done in relative secrecy, at least until recently.
Outside of that cryptic Instagram post last month, little if anything has been said publicly about the practice. Largely done in private, Wayne only revealed his research after another case study was completed last month.
Posted June 26, Industrial Inspection & Consulting revealed its own research involving sealed packs and boxes of Pokemon cards. A consulting and inspection service, the company uses CT scanners to ensure items are manufactured properly, and it began scanning Pokemon cards in an attempt to show the sensitivity of its CT imaging.
In the study, Industrial Inspection found CT scans could “extract the shape of the Pokemon due to slight density differences in the cards and foils.” Like other scans, the images aren’t completely clear, but enough details come through that savvy collectors can spot the best cards.
For Industrial Inspection, the study was simply a pitch to potential clients.
“There is no gain here for us other than marketing, because if we can do that with a Pokemon card, imagine what we can do for large pharmaceutical clients that want to look at their blister packs to find leak paths and things like that,” Industrial’s general manager Keith Irwin told cllct. “If we can find a defect like this or a characteristic like this, we can pretty much do anything.”
According to Irwin, Industrial Inspection has no interest in examining Pokemon cards further. Made up of mostly 20- and 30-year olds, the team came up with the idea because members grew up with the franchise. After scanning a single card, they decided to try a sealed pack and then a box. The team also considered scanning baseball cards and lottery tickets.
For Industrial Inspection, scanning Pokemon cards simply isn’t a good value proposition. The company used a seven-figure CT scanner, and even the chance at securing even some of the most expensive cards isn’t a worthwhile endeavor.
The implications for collectors were also made clear in the aftermath of the study.
“The only reason why we did this — not to rile up a community or do anything like that — is because it's just amazing data,” Irwin said. “And what you've already seen now, trending on YouTube, is that other people are doing it, and it only is coming to light because we put the case study out there. So, I guess from that lens, this is a good thing, because it lets people know what is happening.”
“And so since we did it first and then other people are following up for some clout, that means that they were doing it in secret,” Irwin added.
Whether or not the technology works is no longer in question. The question now is the extent of its use.
A seven-figure CT scanner like the one operated by Industrial Inspection isn’t available to the typical collector, but Wayne proved the cost of entry is accessible.
Including the initial purchase, Wayne believes he spent around $5,000 total plus his own labor. The software needed can be extremely expensive at the commercial level, but Wayne managed with a free academic version. His professional experience with X-rays should also be considered.
Industrial Inspection proved it could be done with high-end equipment, and Wayne proved it could be done cheaper. Immediate feedback from the collecting community has also made it clear that accessing CT scanners, through hospitals and academic settings, isn’t particularly hard for the right people either.
If the barrier to entry isn’t extremely high, what’s to stop individuals or businesses with the funding or access from exploring the process? The hobby is filled with ethical and honest people, but it also has deceptive individuals that are willing to search packs, weigh boxes and even replace the entire contents of a prized Pokemon box with G.I. Joe cards.
Thanks to pack searching and ironing wax packs a whole business developed around authenticating sealed boxes. It turned into a massive cottage industry for Wisconsin-based Baseball Card Exchange that the difference between a boxed wrapped with BBCE's logo and a box that didn't was the difference between truth and a lie.
“I don't think it's breaking the game for everybody,” Wayne said. “There's new and fun and exciting things that are going to come from it.”
When and how the card manufacturers adjust is something collectors will be closely monitoring. Cardboard decoys have long been used to throw off pack searches, but blocking X-rays is a far different challenge. If there’s an easy solution, collectors haven’t been told yet.
Requests for comment from cllct weren’t immediately returned by Panini America, Topps and Upper Deck.
Despite the panic from collectors, Wayne is skeptical this discovery will have a major negative impact on the hobby. He’s received negative feedback from angry collectors already, but he says he also has received positive feedback as well, and believes there are a variety of outcomes that don’t involve the technology being used to scam hobbyists.
According to Wayne, X-ray technology could help authenticate sealed products — especially in a Pokemon market flooded with fake packs and boxes. During his testing, Wayne examined a fake Ninetales card alongside a real one. The counterfeit card was easily identifiable through the CT imaging.
The technology could also be useful for collectors of graded or sealed packs. It’s already common practice to purchase packs with certain cards visible on the front and back, and X-ray technology could take that another step. Would a player or character collector want to add a sealed pack they knew had their favorite player or Pokemon somewhere inside? It’s certainly possible.
The vintage trading card market is plagued by resealed packs and boxes, and it’s hard to argue that giving authenticators an additional tool is a bad thing. Individual collectors might not invest in a CT scanner, but a trusted authenticator might.
Still, many collectors purchase into breaks as a form of gambling. If this practices starts to make them think the game is not fair, the business could be fractured.
In the end, both Irwin and Wayne believe this use of X-ray technology becoming public is a positive thing. It might be frustrating for collectors to learn at first, but it’s better to know a new hazard exists than to be impacted by it in secret.
“If [fraud] was already going on, that's not going to change,” Wayne said. “And now that it's above board, now that people know it exists, that opens up an avenue for things like guaranteed hits or authenticity verification. I'm optimistic.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.