PSA has already graded over 600,000 cards this month and is examining about 26,000 cards per day.
Still shut down for all but higher value submissions as the company works through its mountainous backlog of orders, the company continues to see a lot of current era basketball cards.
Data compiled by GemRate.com through July 23 indicates PSA is grading at a one percent higher rate this month than it was in June when it graded approximately 736,000 cards in 30 days. If it continues at the current pace through the end of this week, graders will have examined more than two million cards between May and July. Well over 50 percent of those cards were produced in the last ten years.
The bulk of the cards graded in July are basketball (214,000) with baseball up slightly from June (164,000). Pokemon cards were the third most graded type, followed by football, hockey and soccer.
PSA again plowed through thousands of Michael Jordan cards in the first 23 days of this month—nearly 22,000, followed by LeBron James (over 16,000), Kobe Bryant (12,500), Ja Morant (9,200) and Zion Williamson (9,000).
The number of Kevin Durant cards added to the population report grew by about 104 percent—more than any other athlete. PSA graded over 2,400 copies of Durant’s Topps rookie card alone. Look for more of his 2007 Topps McDonald’s All-American cards to hit the market as well, with PSA rating 2,100 of them already this month.
Other cards seen a lot thus far in July were the 1986 Topps Traded Bo Jackson, the 1989 Topps Update Ken Griffey Jr., the 1992-93 Topps Shaquille O’Neal and the 1990-91 Fleer Jordan.
Graders may be getting sick of seeing 2019-20 basketball cards. From July 1-23, they encapsulated over 18,000 cards from Panini Prizm, about 12,000 from Mosaic and around 9,500 Chronicles. The only two non-basketball sports card products in the top ten most graded sets were 2020 Topps and Topps Chrome Baseball.
Only about five percent of the total cards graded in any sport were those produced prior to 1980.