Will PSA's Shutdown Crash The Sports Card Market?

追加: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]All right, so the major news is officially been announced. It's been confirmed uh that PSA will be shutting down all of their lower lower-level services. So, no chance of getting bulk or any of the cheaper levels of service with PSA anymore. We talked about this last night on the YouTube, but obviously it's now come to fruition. It's been confirmed by PSA, uh which makes sense.

[00:00:17]Anytime we take a road trip, go on vacation, there's major hobby breaking news. So, uh be that as it may, I did want to at least address this going forward because I think there's really uh two sides of the argument. I think there's obviously some potential good that comes out of this, and then I think there's potential bad as we've seen in the past. So, just to focus for a minute, I'm going to put my positive hat on on the bright side. If you have cards at PSA, they will get back to you sooner, I hope. Uh that that's the plan.

[00:00:40]They're shutting down because they want to see uh those cards get back. And they're not taking any new cards. So, hey, let's throw all of our time, energy, resources at getting the cards that we have on hand back to us. Great.

[00:00:52]I will say actually I'm not totally opposed to the shutdown anyways because I'd rather me have my card for months than send it in and have it sit for 6 months, 8 months, whatever. Um so, I something had to be done. I think we had to see a drastic measure taken. It's exactly what we've seen. So, they're going to shut that down, slow dramatically, anything they're taking in, and focus on the backlog, start getting our cards back to us. Uh so, what what happens now, I guess, is the big question.

[00:01:15]We've seen PSA do this before, and what happened in the past, 2021, 22 especially, people started throwing a ton of cards at SGC, and the return time stayed relatively quick, which was awesome. And then people, to a much lesser degree, threw their stuff at Beckett or BGS, the other grading company. I think we'll see that again. I think people will really lean into those two. Um the absolute pie in the sky unbelievable thing that I don't know if this will happen, but maybe we see this start to trend that direction, is that those other two holders, SGC and Beckett holders, their resale value start to close the gap to PSA. PSA outsells everything by a mile. Maybe now that we have so much attention and I'm assuming so many more more going to Beckett and to SGC, maybe people will pay more attention. Hopefully the secondary market responds and there's a closer resale value there.

[00:02:03]If that happens, awesome for the consumer having three options of grading companies that are known and trusted and have been around forever and have similar resale value on the secondary market, that would be amazing. Then we have options. Hey, if Beckett's slow, I can send to the other two or if PSA shuts down again, I have more options and it's all the same resale.

[00:02:20]That would be amazing. I don't know if that's going to happen. I think that's a little bit, you know, me just being overly positive, but hopefully we see some of that.

[00:02:26]Hopefully we see the backlog get cleared up a little bit.

[00:02:30]Now, the total flip side of that in the negative, which by the way, there is a track record of this happening. Back in 2021, 2022 when PSA got super slammed, things slowed way, way down. They had to shut down for a little bit.

[00:02:40]What happened is the singles market took a major dive. Now granted, that was somewhat of a correction because of COVID, no question.

[00:02:48]Things got totally out of whack, but it also had a lot to do with PSA shutting down. They had a ton of people's cards, so there was a a lot less liquidity in the marketplace because hey, I I can't go out and buy a card cuz my cards are tied up at PSA. I don't have my stuff to sell to then go out and buy more. And then when they shut down totally, I think a lot of people kind of started getting way less confident and hey, I'm going to go out and buy individual cards raw and grade them. So, we've seen this happen in the past. I think the the market in general, the hobby is in a much better place now than it was in 2021, 2022. We're not coming off that huge COVID boom. Yes, things are on the upward path.

[00:03:24]I do think this slows the singles market some though. I think there's going to be a huge reaction.

[00:03:28]So again, I think people will continue to grade SGC and Beckett I think will be the two biggest recipients of new cards, but I am I am slightly fearful that people are going to see this as hey, we need to kind of pump the brakes, really hold up on the singles market and maybe this is what happens that slows that upward trajectory that we've seen the market on the last few months. So, time will tell, the market will respond and we'll see what the numbers tell. But for now, PSA closing down their lower level services and so we'll see how this affects the hobby.