Well Boys and Girls, if you haven’t seen it yet, PSA just doubled the price to get your cards graded with their grading service. This just happened today – March 1, 2021. Here is a chart showing the old PSA prices vs the new PSA prices:
Value Price Grading jumped from $10/card to $20/card!
Economy Price Grading jumped from $20/card to $50/card!
Regular Price Grading jumped from $50/card to $100/card!
Express Price Grading jumped from $75/card to $150/card!
And Super Express jumped from $200/card to $300/card!
At least PSA decreased the minimum card submission total for their Value Tier from 20 cards to 10 cards. And PSA increased the minimum declared value of Value Tier Submissions from $199 to $499. But still … Wow! My wallet is crying.
Getting your Pokemon, MTG, Yugioh, and Sports cards graded by PSA all just doubled in cost! Sending in 10 Cards is going to cost you $20/card plus Shipping/Handling and Insurance – both ways. Realistically, the Value Service will cost you about $25/card to $30/card to get a card graded from PSA once those extra costs are factored in.
And, if you didn’t know, Turnaround Times at PSA are currently sitting at about 8 months for Value Pricing.
In 2014, I got some Pokemon cards graded for $6/card! The price has more than tripled since then!
Is it time to switch to CGC for Pokemon card grading?
CGC graded card pricing is less than half of PSA. But CGC has a much larger minimum submission requirement. You can get cards graded for $9/each, but you need to submit a minimum of 50 cards. This is nice if you have a lot of cards you want to submit at once.
CGC also offers subgrades for $7/card. So you can get your cards graded at CGC – with subgrades – for less than a graded card without subgrades from PSA. Is that swaying anyone? Not everyone has 50 cards to submit, but a lot of collectors do. CGC has a much faster turnaround time as well, about 2-1/2 months for Bulk cards.
Economy Pricing with CGC is $18/card. That $2/card cheaper than PSA. Not a big difference, but it is still less expensive than PSA, and there are no minimum submission requirements for that service. And turnaround times are 2 months vs. 8 months.
CGC has raised prices about 15% since 2020 as well. Bulk submittals were $8/card in 2020. And subgrades were $5/card in 2020.
Quick note about CGC for Sports Card Grading. CGC’s Sports card grading site is: CSGCards.com. Prices are $8/card for bulk sports card grading right now.
How about Beckett?
Well Beckett just raised their prices in mid-February. They are also $20/card now like PSA. And subgrades add $15/card. Yikes!
Conclusion
All I know is that it got a lot more expensive to grade cards with PSA and Beckett! The demand for graded cards has sky-rocketed during the COVID pandemic, and PSA/BGS/CGC have had to invest a lot of time and money on hiring, storage space, office space, and equipment to catch up with demand. Rumor has it that PSA alone has over 1 million cards waiting to be graded in their vaults. I think they also had to raise the prices to deter folks from submitting every rare card they come across from a freshly opened pack.
Will this price increase turn away folks from graded cards? Will this price increase drive people to CGC? Will CGC cards catch on more with collectors? Will CGC raise their prices too?
Time will tell!