The four major grading companies processed over 1.6 million cards in the month of April. That’s 11% more than the output from a year ago but 7% less than in March.
Data tracked by GemRate shows PSA labeled about 1.2 million trading cards in the 30-day month that ended Tuesday–up 11% from April of 2023. Of those 743,000 were sports cards. SGC, which is being purchased by PSA, was the month’s big winner, grading a company record 164,000 cards in April including 138,000 sports cards.
Overall grading activity at PSA, SGC, Beckett and CGC declined by 7% in April compared to March, but was up 11% YoY.
Baseball was the most popular sport submitted by all of the grading companies.
The majority of the cards, as usual, were those issued in recent years. At PSA, nearly 62% of those 743,000 sports cards graded were made in the last four years. Fifty-four percent of the cards from the last five years that were graded were awarded PSA 10 Gem Mint grades, with 49% of those from the 2010s getting a 10 label.
Vintage cards still accounted for a sizeable number, however, with 10.4% of the sports cards graded by PSA dating to the 1960s and earlier.
The most popular players submitted at PSA included Houston Texans rookie quarterback CJ Stroud (21,700 cards), Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani (21,100), basketball legend Michael Jordan (16,900) and NHL rookie Connor Bedard (10,000).
It won’t shock anyone to note that the most graded individual cards were those of San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama. PSA processed 5,100 2023-24 Prizm rookie cards of the multi-skilled French big man and 3,400 Prizm Monopoly cards.
SGC also graded a wall of Wembys–3,000 in all with Michael Jordan cards accounting for about 3,100 of their monthly total. Stroud (2,600), Mickey Mantle (2,000) and Ohtani (1,700) rounded out SGC’s total for the month. The company graded more baseball cards than any (69,300) but TCG cards also accounted saw a 47% rise from March with SGC ripping through 25,600 of them. 2
2023 Prizm Football was the most graded set at SGC with around 4,500 cards graded, followed by 2024 Topps Baseball (1,900).
CGC saw a 50% increase in baseball cards graded last month (6,800) with football (4,800) the second most popular sport. Overall, CGC graded 18,000 sports cards out of a total of 181,000.
Beckett’s percentage of 1990s cards graded was greater than any other company. In all, the Texas company saw 63,000 cards in all last month with sports accounting for 33,000 of that number. Nearly 48% of the cards graded by Beckett were from the last five years with baseball (11,200) and football (8,400) leading the way. Notably, the card Beckett graders saw more than any other was the 2023-24 Upper Deck Bedard rookie card (343).
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