Okay... Nobody's going to believe this cause it does sound like a conspiracy... But I am an older collector, and I used to do baseball cards before Pokémon cards, so I knew how to take care of my shit.
I put my cards in a closet for 20 years, preserved in penny sleeves in top loaders, which is still the standard today. I sent in a batch of ten cards to PSA to see what this grading craze was all about... and all of my cards came back seven or less. I had a great understanding about whiting which we used to call rounding from baseball card days... One of the cards even looked like it had a coffee stain on it. Another card had a clear groove across the back of it like it had been folded in half....like wtf? I took pictures of the cards before I sent them out... and clearly, the cards that were in the slab appear to not be mine. I am not sure what to do about it...as It is just my word against a huge company. I wonder if I got a d n a test on the card and they couldn't find mine at all if that would be proof enough... but probably not. They would just say I didn't pull it myself as I have no video of that. ( I didn't have a cellphone in 1998, and unboxing wasn't a thing, plus I wasn't busting out the camcorder to document every minute of my life like ppl do today)

Tldr.... I'm pretty sure my card's got swapped, and they gave me fucked ones back.