For several years now, grading has been a polarizing topic in the card collecting space. On one hand, grading preserves cards' condition, guarantees it to prospective buyers and sellers, and has allowed collectors to command a real premium. However, grading has also made the hobby less accessible and more expensive at multiple levels, while also introducing confusion over which companies' grades are "better" and how much value to actually assign to each of them. Making matters worse, both PSA and Beckett have had similar issues that appear poised to change the grading economy forever.
Most collectors are aware of PSA's pause of their cheaper "value" submission tiers earlier this year due to their card backlog in the millions, with their alleged goal being to get back to business as usual sometime this fall. However, a recent update showed that their backlog got much worse over the last month or so, and there was a fair bit of controversy at The National last week, as PSA had to stop guaranteeing same-day grading at the show itself.
All of that could be chalked up to a company just struggling to manage crushing demand. However, with the recent news that Beckett Grading Services (which is owned by the same company as both PSA and SGC) is also pausing their grading submissions, there is a real concern that the days of affordable grading for everyone are a thing of the past.
Submission pauses failing to solve grading issues make you wonder if PSA, Beckett, SGC can ever return for the common man
The obscene wait times that some collectors are currently experiencing (I personally have a PSA submission I am still waiting on from late February) are a topic for another day, as important as that topic is. What is more concerning is that, based on current trends, there is little incentive for these companies to bring back cheaper grading tiers or maintain quick turnaround times.
If we learned anything from The National, it is that demand for PSA specifically hasn't exactly diminished, despite the controversy around their backlog and subsequent submission pause. The lines at The National for the (very expensive) on-site grading services were still hundreds of people long and got to the point where PSA could no longer guarantee that cards would be graded in the time originally quoted. Even with all of the complaints about how long grading is taking and how much it costs to submit cards right now, PSA's backlog actually GREW from 11 million to 12.4 million in two weeks last month, even with the pause in place.
At what point will PSA's parent company decide that if there are no appreciable changes in demand, there is no reason to not make the pause on lower grading tiers permanent? These companies under Collectors Holdings are all still getting more submissions than they can handle anyway, so why would they ever bring cheaper grading options back? As the old saying goes, once you increase prices and customers show they will still pay, why go back?
The hope here is that with these price changes and pauses, other grading companies will emerge to challenge Collectors Holdings by offering cheaper services while upholding grading quality. CGC has made some inroads over the last year or so, and we have seen companies pop up in the past when demand got crazy. One hopes something gives or PSA/Beckett/SGC continue to have lower-cost options available to collectors once these backlogs get tamed. Otherwise, we could see even more collectors priced out of the hobby, while grading officially becomes something only the wealthy can afford.
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