PSA kept the postal service busy in March.
For the first time in history, the company says it graded and shipped over one million trading cards in a single month as it continues to work through a submission backlog that measured around 13 million cards around this time last year.
The total was up 25% from February when PSA reported grading and shipping 802,694 trading cards in a month containing three fewer days.
In the first three months of this year, PSA says it has graded and shipped 2,783,269 cards, a 7.8% increase year-over-year from the same three months in 2021.
In February, the company reported that the backlog had been cut by just over half, to just over six million cards. While the company’s expanded workforce continues to spend the majority of its efforts toward continuing to lower the number of orders it’s been holding for many months, PSA has begun accepting limited numbers of submissions from members on a weekly basis.
For the second straight month, Pokemon topped the list of the most graded cards with 272,735. Basketball (246,999) and baseball (212,040) were second and third. Football (129,996) and soccer (28,743) rounded out the top five list in March.
The company graded more Michael Jordan cards than any other basketball player in March. Jordan had been fourth on the February list. LeBron James was second and Zion Williamson was third, again evidence that PSA continues to grade cards submitted during the 2020-21 season, prior to the 2019 draft pick’s lost 2021-22 campaign. Ja Morant and Kobe Bryant rounded out the top 5.
Luis Robert, Fernando Tatis, Bo Bichette, Mike Trout and Ken Griffey Jr. –up from eighth last month-were the top five baseball player cards graded. PSA has now graded 35,448 copies of Robert’s 2020 Topps rookie card, 16,662 of which have been rated Gem Mint 10.
PSA said 16 of the top 20 individual golf cards featured Tiger Woods and the 46-year-old star accounted for 82.8% of all golf cards graded by PSA in March.
Cards of Youssofa Moukoko, Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo were the most graded from soccer while the list of most graded athletes from other sports included Lewis Hamilton, Serena Williams and Max Verstappen.
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