There are plenty of announcements made by trading card manufacturers every day — most of them amount to nothing more than meaningless PR fodder. 

Every so often though, one comes along that is certainly worthy of note. 

One of these announcements came Wednesday from my friends at Upper Deck when they informed collectors that this year’s premier product, The Cup, was debuting an innovative and potentially industry-changing program aimed at eliminating counterfeiting and patch-swapping,  particularly in the highly coveted The Cup RPAs.

“The trading card industry has experienced a massive patch swapping challenge for years now, where counterfeiters will cut out and swap patches to increase a card’s after-market value based on the player or colors of the patch. Until now, there has been no trusted mechanism to self-verify if a card has been tampered with, and this Rookie Auto Patch Authentication is the first step in tackling this massive industry-wide issue,” Upper Deck President Jason Masherah said in the release. 

Each RPA in 23-24 The Cup, which releases June 4, 2025, is slabbed, photographed and serial numbered with a QR code, allowing collectors to view multiple images of their card as it was originally issued by Upper Deck — all with a scan of the code on their mobile device. 

“This is a game changer for the industry. Collectors have never been in a position to have confidence in a card’s authenticity before making a purchase,” said Masherah, who spearheaded this initiative for the company. “Before you buy an Upper Deck Rookie Auto Patch Card from an auction or a card show, you now have the ability to quickly see on a secure platform whether or not the card remains as we originally created it, without the risk of purchasing a manipulated card or needing to go through the extra step of shipping it to us or a third-party for verification.”

Those who score Rookie Auto Patch cards can visit www.TheAuthority.com to test the Upper Deck Rookie Auto Patch Authentication process using The Authority Authenticator. Learn more at www.UpperDeck.com.

This piece of technology will certainly be met with some push-back from collectors who love to actually touch the card and not the slab. That said, eliminating as much fraud and bad actors from the hobby is always a good thing.

Kudos to my beloved Upper Deck team who have been setting the bar for things such as this since the introduction of the hologram sticker in 1989 baseball.