PSA Dominated the Graded Card Market Again In 2023
As expected, PSA was the king of grading again in 2023 and it has more impressive numbers to back it up.
GemRate, a third-party tracker of the four major grading services, released its 2023 recap on Tuesday, and PSA sat atop the list with 13.5 million items graded. According to GemRate, that’s a 21% increase compared to 2022.
Overall, PSA held a 78% market share in 2023.
CGC Cards followed in a distant second with 1.7 million items graded. Despite a 29% increase from 2022, SGC finished third with 1.2 million. Once considered by many to be the standard for sports card grading, Beckett finished with just over 770,000.
While PSA graded the most items across all categories, sorting by sports, non-sports and TCG shifts the rankings for the other three services. As expected, SGC finished second with 1.1 million of its 1.2 million total items falling under sports or miscellaneous.
2023 Grading Year in Review
— GemRate (@gemrate) January 3, 2024
Over 17 million items were graded across the four major graders in 2023 - which is up 19% compared to 2022.
Roughly 9 million sports cards (-6% YoY) and 8 million TCG (+ non sport) cards (+71% YoY) were graded.
— PSA graded 13.5m cards - up 21% YoY… pic.twitter.com/re60w7lHDV
Popular among Pokemon and Marvel collectors, CGC finished second when sorting by non-sport and TCG categories. Over 80% of CGC’s graded items were considered non-sports or TCG.
Considered by many collectors to be the toughest grader, Beckett actually finished 2023 with the highest gem rate while handing out a 9.5 or better 45% of the time — 30% for sports and 60% for TCG.
According to overall gem rate, SGC was the toughest grader while awarding an SGC 10 or better just 26% of the time. Among sports cards, CGC was the toughest with a 23% gem rate.
Despite the narrative that baseball has greatly fallen in popularity among collectors, GemRate data shows that America’s Pastime was by far the most submitted sport across all four services.
A 20% increase across all four services brought baseball’s total to 3.6 million items in 2023. Basketball saw a massive 42% decrease to 1.8 million items. Football also fell 14% to 2.3 million items.
Beyond sports cards, TCG and Pokemon dominated grading in 2023 with 7.7 million items graded across the major services — a 74% increase from 2022.
Head over to GemRate for regular data and analysis on the four major grading services.
