PSA Suspended All Services Besides Super Express.. What’s the Next Move For Sports Card Investors?

So.. yeah.

The president of Professional Sport Authenticators Steve Sloan announced on March 30th that, effective immediately, PSA would be suspending all grading services, except for their Super Express level.

“The sheer volume of orders that PSA received in early March has fundamentally changed our ability to service the hobby,” said PSA President Steve Sloan in the March 30th statement. “The reality is that we recently received more cards in three days than we did during the previous three months. Even after the surge, submissions continue at never-before-seen levels.”

“We will take a tiered approach to reintroducing these service levels. Our goal is to bring all suspended service levels back by July 1, 2021,” said Sloan.

This was a gutsy decision by PSA, who was just bought out for $700 million by an investor group led by sports card collector and entrepreneur Nat Turner.

As you may have read in my last article, card grading is the bread and butter of making money in the sports card industry/hobby.

As an affect, there was some negative feedback displayed on social media and forums directed towards the decision made by PSA.

“PSA is failing at their services. You don’t shut down the concession stand mid-game. We’re in a golden era renaissance of the trading card industry and they quit,” said one Twitter user.

Others praised the move.

“Actually glad PSA shut down their services until July; the halt in grading will help them to get caught up,” said another Twitter user.

The statement ‘getting caught up’ is in reference to the rumored 10 million card backlog that PSA currently has sitting at its facility in Santa Ana, CA.

Now, whether or not this was the right decision made by PSA is a completely different conversation to have.

We can complain about PSA shutting down and not being able to grade cards, but, just like everything else in life, nothing is guaranteed. PSA was basically printing money for us (at least for those who know what they’re doing and are experienced. This cannot continue forever.

So, to the meat of the article, and what you probably came here for- what do you do, as a sports card investor, going forward?

Do you look to another grading company such as SGC, (who just tripled their prices) BGS (whose turnaround times are almost as impacted as PSA, yet their cards hold not nearly the same value), or new-kid-on-the-block HGA (who only takes 2000 cards a week).

I believe the buying and selling of raw cards will be the play for the next few months until PSA reintroduces their cheaper services levels.

With that being said, PSA graded cards of 2020–21 NBA Prizm and other sets that will drop in the coming months will be of the highest demand. If I pulled a LaMelo Ball card and it was well-centered, I would send it to PSA in a heartbeat. You could almost control the market on this card.

Low population, graded cards of people who pop off in a game, a stretch of games, or an extended period of time will see tremendous price increases.

It will be interesting to see what happens with raw card prices over the next few months. There may be a slight dip in prices right now, as people will be selling off the cards in that $200–300 range that they won’t want to pay $300 to get graded.

Personally, I think this creates the perfect buying opportunity for the top football rookies of the 2020 season.

On the other end of this shutdown, there may be a high demand for football cards of the big football quarterbacks (Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow) because, whenever PSA reopens their Express and Standard levels, people will be rushing to get these cards in and graded for football season.

Another thing on the near horizon is the NBA playoffs.

The “playoff bump” is a real thing, as the midseason lull around even the superstars in the game will shortly be elevated to playoff hype, as collectors grab cards of their favorite players, and investors buy up players on teams who will be making deep playoff runs.

As far as baseball cards go, again, I have been applying the same strategy about taking the PSA population report into account. The demand will be crazy on a Bo Bichette Topps Chrome PSA 10 (POP 1145) if he goes on a crazy run like Fernando Tatis Jr. did last year.

These lower pop cards are a safe buy anyways, and with the shutdown of almost all service levels, this seems to be another strong play.