projectoutshine

Audit log (1 report on file)

1. 2026-08-26
   ReportReported for: Lied about the grade

   Common cards, including foreign-language commons, presented as "gem 10" in "TGC / Trophy 10 Authentic" slabs from a grader with no public cert lookup or submission process.

   Conduct recorded on stream and independently reported publicly by another creator.

   
2. 2026-08-26
   Note

   Published the same day it was reported, rather than the usual 3 to 5 days, because the findings were conclusive.

3. 2026-08-27
   NoteReported for: Common ownership

   Linked to Trophy Grading (TGC) as common ownership on the weight of documented research; owner identity held in records, not published. Open to dispute.

What we checked (18 sources)

• TikTok live auction (@projectoutshine)2026-08-26

  Recorded 2026-08-26: over roughly 46 minutes the seller repeatedly presented common Pokemon cards, including Chinese-language commons, in slabs labeled "TGC Certified 10 Authentic" and called them "gem 10" at $1-start prices, without naming the grading company on stream.

  Source

• Grading company website (trophygrading.com)2026-08-26

  Checked 2026-08-26: the Trophy Grading (TGC) website has no public card-submission process, no cert-number lookup, and no mailing address - only a homepage and a contact form. The slabs carry no recognised third-party grading standing.

  Source

• eBay completed sales (130point aggregator)2026-08-26

  Checked 2026-08-26: about 67 "Trophy Grading" slabs have completed sale on eBay at roughly $1 to $6 each; 24 carry a "10" label, all dated 2026, after the top label was changed from the "9.5 Gem Mint" used in 2025.

  Source

• Independent public report (GhostHustle, @ghosthustletcg)2026-08-26

  Observed 2026-08-26: an independent creator publicly documented the same conduct, describing the slabs as "fake with no way to look up the cert" and containing "very cheap bulk cards".

  Source

• Seller cross-channel presence (Whatnot, eBay)2026-08-26

  Checked 2026-08-26: the same handle operates a Whatnot store and an eBay store. The high Whatnot review score reflects shipping fulfilment and does not speak to grade accuracy.

  Source

• TikTok live capture (@projectoutshine), 44-minute run 2026-08-262026-08-27

  Across a single captured 44-minute live the seller ran 45+ distinct slabbed cards and bundles and called nearly every one a "gem 10" or "gem mint 10" (for example [03:56] "Gem ten flareon lets go," [05:30] "Gem 10 Pikachu lets go," [39:36] "That is a Gem 10 Eevee"), spanning Flareon, Raichu, Pikachu, Vaporeon, Eevee, Glaceon, Espeon, Leafeon and Charmeleon. In the same show he said plainly what the cards actually are: "Im selling Pokemon cents for $2, my boy. I gotta cycle through." Captured sale prices matched that, around $2 to $3.35. Signing off, he noted the operation now runs "pretty much 24-7."

• TikTok live capture - slab close-ups (evidence on file)2026-08-27

  The slabs the seller called "gem 10" are labeled "Pokemon / TGC Certified / 10 / Authentic" with a Trophy Grading Company logo, not PSA, BGS, or CGC. On these labels the large "10" reads like a condition grade, but it is paired with the small word "Authentic," which denotes only that a card is not proven counterfeit and is not a numeric condition grade, and the slabs carry no per-card cert or barcode number to look up. The cards sealed inside the close-ups are Chinese-language Eevee-lution commons (Eevee, Vaporeon, Umbreon, Leafeon) - low-value foreign commons presented on camera as premium graded slabs.

• Grading company audit - trophygrading.com (WHOIS/RDAP, site review, Wayback)2026-08-27

  Trophy Grading Company (TGC), the grader on these slabs, has no verifiable grading operation. trophygrading.com is a two-page GoDaddy website-builder site with no cert-number lookup, no published grading scale or methodology, and no submission or order flow (only a lead-capture contact form), and its Terms and Conditions page is unedited GoDaddy placeholder text. The domain was registered 2025-08-21 and the Wayback Machine holds zero archived snapshots, so its public presence is roughly one year old. It appears in no published ranking of trading-card grading services and has no market recognition; TGC slabs resell for about $1 to $6. It should not be confused with the unrelated "True Grade Company" (truegradecompany.com), which does publish a cert registry.

  Source

• TikTok live capture + independent creator report (GhostHustle @ghosthustletcg)2026-08-27

  Challenged on stream about the grading, the seller vouched for Trophy directly and steered the questioner away from any verification, naming "Trophy grading company my boy" and saying [04:44] "I dont have any scanner... Yes, they are legit, brother... Just look up trophy grading, bro... Its not that hard" - pointing to the marketing site rather than to a cert lookup or scan. An independent creator (GhostHustle) documented that the seller pre-blocked him before he could enter the stream and instantly banned him when he asked whether the cards were self-submitted for grading or sourced third-party, and that Trophys own site advertises cheap grading with no way to look up cert numbers.

  Source

• TikTok live capture - borrowed legitimacy + misidentification2026-08-27

  To lend borrowed legitimacy to the bulk TGC lot, the seller interspersed a small number of genuine, verifiable slabs, for example a CGC MINT 9 "Mankey, Scarlet and Violet 151, 056/165 Reverse Holo" with a real lookup-able cert/barcode number (6059190140), announced as "the only English CGC we got." Placing one authentic, checkable CGC common (itself only a few dollars) alongside the unverifiable TGC "10 Authentic" slabs presents the whole run as legitimately graded product. He also misidentified cards and sets on stream - for example calling a Chinese-language slab a "Prismatic EX Pokemon slab," though Prismatic Evolutions is an English set - and used generic labels ("Pokemon EX slab," "Jam 10 EX"), indicating the specific cards were not actually identified.

• Cross-platform presence (Whatnot, Instagram, eBay, projectoutshine.com)2026-08-27

  The operation runs at scale. On Whatnot the store shows about 118,000 followers, roughly 187,000 items sold, and a 4.9 rating across about 47,700 reviews, running daily $5-start live auctions with giveaways, so a high volume of low-value Trophy-slabbed commons moves to a large audience while individual buyer complaints do not surface in the aggregate rating. The Instagram bio brands them "Top Seller on eBay," but no eBay store under the brand is discoverable - ebay.com/usr/projectoutshine returns "user not found" and the store slugs return HTTP 410 Gone - leaving that claim unverifiable. Their own site claims "$1 Million" or more in annual sales and "$10,000-$20,000" per day and markets a "7-Figure Business Blueprint" e-book and paid training that teaches their live-auction selling method to others.

  Source

• Independent buyer corroboration (collector community discussion)2026-08-27

  Independent buyers corroborate the harm. In a collector community thread a new buyer reported paying about $5 on Whatnot for a Pokemon card in a Trophy Grading slab and asked whether the grader is legitimate; a commenter replied that Trophy Grading is "generally considered a scam company that tries to drive up the TCG market by overpricing cards," valuing that specific card at roughly $3 ungraded versus about $60 only if it were a genuine PSA 10. That matches the captured pattern exactly: commons worth cents to a few dollars presented and sold as premium "gem 10" graded slabs.

• TikTok live capture (@projectoutshine / ProjectOutshine4), 2026-08-272026-08-27

  Fresh dated capture confirms the operation is ongoing as of this date. The live display name of the account is literally ProjectOutshine4, consistent with repeated account replacement (the fourth iteration under this brand name). In this session the seller ran a live auction mixing raw Japanese and Korean-language Pokemon commons with the same TGC Certified / Authentic / 10 slabs documented previously (photo on file). The operation has also expanded beyond Pokemon into sports cards, including baseball, basketball and football, sold in identical TGC Authentic 10 slabs. On these slabs the large 10 remains paired with the word Authentic, which denotes only that a card is not proven counterfeit and is not a numeric condition grade.

• TikTok live capture (@projectoutshine / ProjectOutshine4), 2026-08-27 session 22026-08-27

  On the same 2026-08-27 live the seller extended the fake-grade pattern to name-brand sports cards. A Donruss Caitlin Clark (Iowa Hawkeyes) basketball card was shown and auctioned inside a slab labeled TGC Certified / Authentic / 10 carrying a Trophy Grading Company logo (not PSA, BGS, or CGC), started at $1 in a #88 Sports Auction. As with the Pokemon slabs, the large 10 on the label reads like a gem-mint condition grade but is paired with the word Authentic, which only denotes that a card is not proven counterfeit and is not a numeric condition grade, and the slab carries no per-card cert or barcode to look up. Presenting a recognizable, genuinely collectible player card in an unrecognized Authentic 10 slab misrepresents both the grade and the value to bidders. The same show also ran cheap raw foreign-language product, for example Korean-language Pokemon booster packs, in $1-start #84 TCG Auction lots.

• Seller public website (projectoutshine.com)2026-08-27

  ProjectOutshine is a business, not a hobby seller. On its own website it describes itself as an online-only auction company that primarily sells on WhatNot, in business for 2 years, running live auctions 7 days a week with well over $1 Million in annual sales, and states it is not uncommon to achieve $10,000-$20,000 in sales per day from its 7-figure operation. It also runs an estate-sales division (acquiring private collections and storage units) and sells a $2,500 in-person training and a $15 e-book teaching its WhatNot sales method, plus a consignment partner program. The fake-grade TGC slabs are one product line inside this operation.

  Source

• Cross-channel account network2026-08-27

  The operation runs across multiple channels under a rotating set of accounts: TikTok (live; the live display name is literally ProjectOutshine4, indicating a fourth account after prior takedowns), Whatnot (store plus daily $5-start live auctions, about 118K followers / 187K items sold / 4.9 across ~47,700 reviews), an eBay store, Instagram, and the websites projectoutshine.com (the parent business) and trophygrading.com (the grader it sources slabs from). The high Whatnot rating reflects shipping fulfilment, not grade accuracy.

  Source

• Domain + payment link to the grader (RDAP/DNS/certs)2026-08-27

  The seller parent domain (projectoutshine.com) and the grader domain (trophygrading.com) share an operator fingerprint: same registrar (GoDaddy), same WHOIS privacy proxy (Domains By Proxy), same nameserver provider, registered four weeks apart (Sep 18 vs Aug 21, 2025), and both run GoDaddy Payments whose checkout subdomains resolve to the same IP pair (100.49.0.246 / 100.49.110.141). Both self-locate in the Dallas, TX area. This ties the auction seller to the grading company whose 10 Authentic slabs it sells.

• Common-ownership determination (research)2026-08-27

  Determination: on the weight of our documented observation and research, the seller ProjectOutshine (TikTok / Whatnot / eBay) and the grading company Trophy Grading (TGC) are operated by the same owner. The evidentiary basis is public and checkable: (1) both domains, projectoutshine.com and trophygrading.com, are registered through the same registrar, hidden behind the same WHOIS privacy proxy, and served by the same nameserver provider; (2) they were registered about four weeks apart (Aug and Sep 2025); (3) both run GoDaddy Payments, and their checkout subdomains, pay.trophygrading.com and pay.projectoutshine.com, resolve to the same pair of IP addresses; (4) both self-locate in the Dallas, TX area; (5) on stream the ProjectOutshine seller vouches for Trophy Grading by name and sells TGC-labeled slabs as a primary product, and TGC slabs circulate through this seller's channels. Any single item could be coincidence; taken together they point to one operator. The owner's identity is held in our records and is deliberately not published here. This determination is open to dispute: a party may contest it through the dispute channel with evidence establishing the actual, separate ownership.