The four major sports card grading companies were busy in 2022.
After ramping up operations for a full 12-month period with no significant shutdowns, PSA, SGC, CSG and Beckett graded nearly 15 million items combined last year, including 9.5 million million sports cards.
Overall, PSA still holds about a 75% market share. The company graded about 7.4 million cards alone last year, according to Gem Rate, which tracks grading data. SGC graded approximately 919,000 cards, followed by CSG and Beckett.
Gaming cards (Pokemon, Magic The Gathering, etc.) were actually the most submitted type of trading card.
Sports and Eras
On the sports side, basketball led the way with over three million cards entering the population reports in all. 2.5 million of those were graded by PSA. Baseball was the second most popular category there.
The most submitted category at both SGC and CSG was baseball. SGC graded more than twice as many baseball cards as basketball.
Once again, the vast majority of cards graded by all four companies were those from the 1990s on up. In fact, over 60% of all cards (sports, TCG and non-sports) graded by Beckett, SGC and CSG in 2022 were made in the last ten years. At PSA, they represented 58.2% of the total. At PSA, fewer than 10% of the cards graded were from the post-War vintage area.
SGC graded the most pre-1960s cards at 10.6. Over 21% of the cards graded by SGC were from the 1970s on back. However SGC also had the highest percentage of cards graded from the current decade at 42.4%.
All of those fresh from the pack current era cards being graded resulted in a lot of Gem Mint grades being added to the population reports. About 66.8% of the cards submitted from the current decade and 44.2% of those from the 2010s were awarded PSA 10 grades according to Gem Rate.
Most Graded Players and Sets
The player who graders saw most often remains Michael Jordan. PSA alone graded about 350,000 Jordan cards in 2022 and has now seen over one million of them all-time. Jordan was also the most popular athlete seen by SGC graders (22,500).
Kobe Bryant (143,000), LeBron James (129,000), Tom Brady (110,000), Justin Herbert (109,000), Joe Burrow (96,000), Ja Morant (95,000), Ken Griffey Jr. (84,000), Derek Jeter (82,000), Zion Williamson (82,000), Shohei Ohtani (75,000) and Shaquille O’Neal (73,000) rounded out the list of most graded players at PSA.
While Jordan and Brady topped SGC’s list, the company also saw 14,000 Mickey Mantle cards come through its offices. Joe Burrow and Mac Jones were also high on SGC’s list.
The most graded individual cards at PSA were the 1990-91 Fleer Jordan #26 (16,000), the 1992-93 Topps O’Neal rookie #362 ($9,500), the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie (9,400), the 1989-90 Hoops Jordan #200 ($9,300) and the 1993 Topps Derek Jeter rookie #98 (8,000).
Griffey and the 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson were among the most graded cards at SGC but the company also saw about 1,000 each of the 1954 Topps Jackie Robinson, the 1966 Topps Mickey Mantle and the 1968 Topps Nolan Ryan rookie card.
SGC also graded a total of over 20,000 cards from three particular vintage sets: 1958, 1959 and 1960 Topps baseball. CSG’s most graded players included Jordan, Bryant, Brady, Ohtani and LeBron James. The company graded the ’90-91 Fleer Jordan and ’89 Upper Deck Griffey the most.
PSA graded about 117,000 cards from the 2019-20 Panini Prizm Basketball set, about 113,000 2020 Prizm Football, 111,000 2020 Mosaic Football, 97,000 2019-20 Mosaic Basketball and about 90,000 2019-20 Hoops Premium Stock Basketball. 1986-87 Fleer Basketball continued to be popular with submitters with PSA examining about 59,000 cards from the set that includes Jordan’s rookie card and numerous other rookie cards of Hall of Famers.
SGC saw a lot of modern football with 2021 Mosaic (12,500), 2020 Select (11,400) and 2021 Donruss (10,800) topping the list followed by 2020-21 Prizm Basketball (9,000).
Football cards also won the year at CSG, led by 2020 Chronicles; 2021 Mosaic, 2020 Select and 2021 Donruss.
For an in-depth breakdown of vintage card grading in 2022, check out Horacio Ruiz’ story from earlier this week.
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