The State of Card Grading in 2026

Card grading changed more in the last 12 months than in the prior decade. Three of the four major graders are now owned (or about to be owned) by the same parent company. PSA had a buyback scandal in December that is still reverberating. There is an antitrust lawsuit. There is a hashtag-fueled boycott happening right now. The economics of when and where to grade have shifted with all of it.

Most of the hobby is still operating on 2024 assumptions. Here is where things actually stand.

The 800-pound gorilla: Collectors Holdings owns almost everything

This is the section that did not exist 18 months ago and now has to come first.

Collectors Holdings owns PSA. Collectors Holdings acquired SGC in February 2024. Collectors Holdings has a pending agreement to acquire BGS, announced December 2025.

That is roughly 80% of the grading market by volume under one corporate roof. The "send your card to a different company" diversification play does not work anymore, because most of the time you are sending it to the same company.

Three things have happened in response.

The first is a private antitrust class action, Rasmussen v. Collectors Holdings, filed in California, naming Collectors, PSA, SGC, and Beckett as defendants and seeking forced divestment. The complaint argues that prices went up at all three brands after acquisition with consumers having no real alternatives. The suit is in early stages. There is no actionable outcome yet, but it is part of the landscape now.

The second is Congressman Pat Ryan's letter to the FTC, asking for an investigation into the consolidation, submitted in late 2025. No formal FTC investigation has been announced. Whether that develops or does not develop is a 2026 story to watch.

The third is more about culture than legal mechanics: #NoPSAMay. A boycott of PSA submissions for the month of May 2026, gaining real traction across collector communities right now. Whether it actually moves submission volumes or just becomes a vent thread is unclear. Either way, the appetite for it tells you where the trust meter sits in the hobby today.

Hold all of this as background while you read the rest. None of the company-by-company takes below are independent of the consolidation story.

PSA, post-scandal, post-acquisition

Still the king for resale liquidity. That part has not changed.

A PSA 10 sells faster and for more than the equivalent grade from any other company. That liquidity premium is the entire reason to use PSA, and it is still there. It may compress over the next 12 months. It has not yet.

The current tier pricing as of the February 2026 update:

Value Bulk requires a Collectors Club membership and a 20-card minimum, with a $500 declared value cap. Value, Value Plus, Value Max, and Regular all bumped $3 to $5 in February. Express and above held.

Now the harder part: the December 2025 buyback scandal. A Pokemon collector submitted around 30 modern cards, got back mostly PSA 9s, accepted a buyback offer at PSA 9 values, and then watched 11 of those same cert numbers turn into PSA 10s without notification. PSA called it a "one-off internal QC error" from a senior reviewer. Critics called it a buyback scam. The truth probably lives somewhere uncomfortable. Either way, PSA slabs took 10 to 20% resale hits in modern Pokemon for several weeks, and the trust damage carried over to sports cards. The boycott traces back to this incident.

Layer that on top of the population report problem. PSA 10 gem rates on modern chrome are high enough that 10s are the expectation, not the exception. The PSA premium is real but no longer untouchable.

The take: PSA is still the default for cards headed to market. The liquidity premium justifies the cost on cards worth $25 raw or more, which is roughly the floor for a low-end Bowman auto. Below that, the math gets ugly fast, especially at anything above the Value Bulk tier.

BGS: hard to justify, with one exception

The original take here holds.

The BGS 9.5 used to trade roughly on par with a PSA 10. That parity is gone on modern cards. A BGS 9.5 now sells for meaningfully less, sometimes 20 to 30% less on mid-range cards. The market chose PSA's binary simplicity (is it a 10 or is it not) over BGS's sub-grade nuance.

The pending Collectors acquisition does not help. If BGS finalizes as a Collectors brand, the diversification angle disappears entirely.

The one exception is Black Labels. A BGS 10 Black Label (a perfect 10 across all four sub-grades) commands a real premium on the right card. I do not chase them personally because the hit rate is brutal and the cost of resubmissions adds up, but they hold their value on the secondary market. If you have a black label or you have a card that is a real candidate for one, BGS is still the venue.

The take: Hard to justify for general grading. Black-label hunts are the only situation where I would send a card to BGS today.

SGC: I cannot recommend it now

This is the section that changed the most.

For most of the last few years, SGC was the vintage default and the cleanest third-option play. The tuxedo slab looks great. Pricing was competitive. Turnarounds were good. Vintage collectors specifically preferred SGC for pre-1980 cards. All of that earned them real market share.

Then Collectors bought them.

I cannot recommend new SGC submissions right now. The structural problem is simple. SGC's value as an alternative to PSA disappeared the moment they became part of the same parent company. You are not diversifying. You are paying SGC pricing for a slab that carries an SGC-tier liquidity discount versus PSA, and the company underneath both names is the same.

If you already own SGC slabs that grade well, holding them is fine. They are real cards in real holders, and the secondary market has not collapsed. For new submissions, I am out.

The take: Do not send new cards to SGC. Existing SGC slabs are fine to hold or sell as the comps support.

CGC: the only true independent at scale

The original take on CGC was that the liquidity discount on sports cards was too steep to justify. That take needs softening, not because the discount went away (it has not), but because CGC is now the only meaningful alternative to the Collectors monopoly.

CGC posted 121% YoY growth and a Fanatics partnership. They are the only major grader of any size that is not part of Collectors Holdings. Whether the antitrust lawsuit goes anywhere or not, CGC is going to capture more share over the next 12 to 18 months simply because the market needs an alternative.

The price reality on sports cards is still that a CGC 10 sells for less than a PSA 10. That gap will likely narrow as volume grows, but it is still there today, and it matters for anything you plan to flip.

The take: Not the default for resale. A defensible choice if you want your submissions to vote with your wallet against consolidation. The trajectory is real even if the current liquidity is not.

TAG: watch, but do not bet PC pieces yet

Worth a section now that was not worth one a year ago.

TAG is the AI-driven grader with the most granular digital report in the industry. They paused their Express tier earlier this year due to demand, made improvements, and reopened it at $60/card, down from $75. The current tier structure:

• BASIC: $22/card, standard 1-10 scale
• STANDARD: $39/card, includes TAG Score and premium imaging, 30 business day turnaround
• PRIORITY: $149/card, full Grading Report Plus with 1000-point sub-scores, 5 business day turnaround

TAG scaled from 30 to 80 employees and from 18,000 to roughly 50,000 cards graded per month over six months, surpassing 500,000 total cards graded. 83% YoY growth.

The slab looks clean. The data on the report is more granular than anyone else's. The market liquidity is the same problem CGC has, just bigger: most buyers will not pay PSA-equivalent prices for a TAG slab today.

The take: Worth watching, not worth betting PC pieces on. If you want to test their service, send something where the slab itself is the goal, not the resale. Their trajectory is the most interesting in the space, but it is a 2027 question, not a 2026 one.

The crossover game

Cracking a slab to resubmit is one of the hobby's enduring temptations. Sometimes it is brilliant. Usually it is a waste of money.

The math is simple in the abstract: (Expected sale price after regrade) - (Current slabbed value) > (Grading fee + shipping + risk of lower grade).

The risk-of-lower-grade factor is what kills most crossovers. You crack a BGS 9.5 chasing a PSA 10, and there is a real chance you get a PSA 9. Now you have spent $30 to $50 in fees and your card is worth less than when you started.

I have never crossed a card. The closest I have come is considering it, running the numbers, and realizing the expected value almost never clears once I account for the grade-down risk on cards I actually care about.

A few rules of thumb if you are considering it:

• BGS 9.5 to PSA: Only on cards where the PSA 10 premium is $100+ over the BGS 9.5 value. Lower thresholds do not justify the risk.
• SGC to PSA: Almost never makes sense. SGC 10s grade well, the price gap on most cards is not wide enough to cover the downside, and the liquidity premium does not compensate enough.
• BGS 9 to anything: Don't. A 9 is a 9 for a reason.

The take: Cross very selectively. Most collectors who try crossovers come out worse than where they started.

Should You Grade?

The framework, refreshed for 2026.

Step 1: What is it worth raw? If the card is worth under $25 raw, the answer is almost always no. That number used to be $50. With the Value Bulk tier at $24.99 plus shipping and insurance, $25 raw is the new floor for the math to even start working. Below that, you are spending more in fees than the card is worth ungraded.

Step 2: What is the grade probability? Be honest. With good prep and a careful pre-grade review (corners, centering, surface), 60% gem rate on clean modern chrome is a reasonable expectation. Without prep, that number drops fast. The most expensive habit in this hobby is wishful thinking about a "pack-fresh" card that is actually a 9.

Step 3: What is the grade premium? Look at comps for your specific card, not "modern Bowman autos generally." A PSA 10 on a flagship rookie auto might command 3x the raw price. A PSA 10 on a mid-rank prospect might be 1.3x. Do the work for your actual card.

Step 4: Run the numbers.

If the expected value is not meaningfully higher than the raw value, hold raw.

The exception: liquid names. Big legends and high-demand names short-circuit the standard math. I will grade anything Ohtani regardless of what the formula says, because clean Ohtani cards in PSA holders sell, period. Trout, Acuna, Judge, Witt, Jackson Holliday, names where the demand floor is high enough that any clean card finds a buyer. The standard formula assumes a typical card with typical demand. Liquid names break the formula in your favor.

When raw is the better play:

• Cards under $25 raw
• Cards with visible flaws (you are paying to confirm a 7 or 8)
• Cards you might sell short term (turnaround time equals opportunity cost)
• Modern base autos with massive PSA 10 populations (the premium has shrunk)
• Cards for your PC that you will never sell

Strategy Outlook

Specific calls, not vague advice.

PSA: Still the default for modern resale on cards $25 raw or higher. Value Bulk is the workhorse. Express only makes sense to catch a hot market window, and decisions made on urgency are usually mistakes. Eyes open about the scandal damage and the consolidation story.

BGS: Hard to justify outside the black-label hunt. If you have a card that is a real perfect-10 candidate across all four sub-grades, BGS is the venue. Otherwise, pass.

SGC: I cannot recommend new submissions. The acquisition removed the diversification logic, the liquidity discount versus PSA has not compressed enough to justify, and the company underneath the slab is now the same company underneath PSA. Existing SGC holdings are fine to hold.

CGC: A defensible choice if you want to support an independent grader. Still carries a sports-card liquidity discount versus PSA, but the trajectory is real and the consolidation story makes them strategically more important than they were 12 months ago.

TAG: Watch, do not bet PC pieces yet. Worth a small test submission if you want to see the slab and the report quality. Resale liquidity is the constraint.

Holding raw: Still the right call for most cards. 5 to 10% of what you pull or buy actually deserves grading. The rest stay in penny sleeves, and that is fine. The hobby convinced a lot of collectors that every card needs a slab. Most do not.

Grading is a tool. Use it when the math works, plus the liquid-name exceptions where the math does not have to. Leave the card raw when neither applies.

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This is not financial advice. These are cards. The data and analysis are here to inform. You make your own calls.

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This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed before publishing. Always verify latest market data, stats, or news.

Published: May 2026