The grading and authentication business continues to boom. PSA and PSA/DNA say they shipped over 620,000 collectibles in the third quarter of the 2019 fiscal year.
“The PSA and PSA/DNA business set another all-time revenue quarterly record for the division and eclipsed last year’s Q3 revenue by roughly $1.3 million, a 24% increase year-over-year,” Joe Orlando, President and CEO of Collectors Universe, the parent company of PSA and PSA/DNA told shareholders this week. “Based on the first three-quarters of fiscal 2019, this part of our company is expected to close out its ninth consecutive year of top and bottom line growth.”
Third quarter revenue for PSA and PSA/DNA was $6.7 million compared to $5.4 million last year.
Coin revenues were up as well and as a whole, revenue for Collectors Universe grew 11% to $19.5 million in the third quarter. “Collectors Universe set a Q3 top line revenue record and a new operating income high, not only for Q3 but for any quarter in company history,” said Orlando.
Those big numbers are great for the bottom line but PSA continues to deal with a huge backlog of customer submissions that’s proven tough to handle despite numerous efforts to improve return times.

“Our short-term goals are clear. Increasing our daily throughput is at the top of the list,” Orlando stated. “Even though the division has been consistently setting new shipping highs year after year, we are still unable to properly measure the true demand for our services because of the immense submission backlog that exists. Just in the past few weeks, our team reconfigured an area of the company’s operation to create space for additional processing stations. We have increased our capacity every quarter for years, but the submission backlog has not decreased in a material way. The incoming business is, as they say a great problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.”
PSA recently set up an order tracking system online so customers can follow the progress of their submissions and pledged to increase communication with regard to turnaround times. Thus far, the ongoing backlog hasn’t hurt business, according to Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Joe Wallace.
“We expect that our cards and autograph revenues will continue to grow in a stable manner,” he said.