Most collectors know that 2024 was a record year for the card grading industry. While the biggest gains were in TCG (Pokemon etc.), modern and vintage sports also broke volume records. With the COVID collecting boom in the rearview, these numbers are impressive. Can 2025 repeat? Read this PSA / SGC Grading Breakdown for 2025 to find out!
So how are things looking in 2025? (Spoiler alert: very good) Can the card grading industry sustain this whirlwind pace? Or are there signs of weakness?
The broader economic markers show some signs of uncertainty, but we would not see that reflected in the grading market yet. Perhaps we will see some decrease in a few months, as February returns were mostly submitted in January or in the case of PSA perhaps even December.
As always, I dig into Gemrate data to try to parse out relevant nuggets for us vintage collectors. But first, let’s look at overall totals:
Feb 2025 Grading Totals
Keep in mind that these totals reflect sport and non-sports. And increasingly, TCG is becoming a driving force behind card grading. SGC just does not perform well in that space, which will make it tough for the preferred vintage grader of choice of many to show overall gains. Is that important? I’m not sure myself.
Feb 2025 Sports Card Grading Totals for PSA and SGC
Meanwhile, SGC posted a YoY gain in sports cards of 10%, but a YoY decline of 77% in TCG. PSA posted a YoY decline in sports cards which is interesting given that February was a record month for grading overall. Can SGC succeed without making more serious inroads in the TCG market?
Feb 2025 Grading Overall Trends
The overall picture is very encouraging if you believe card grading to be an important indicator of hobby health overall. According to Gemrate:
- Overall grading activity was ⬆ 5% in February compared to January and ⬆ 20% YoY.
- Grading activity increased to 1.93 million cards graded in February, up ~85k compared to January. This marks a new all-time high, surpassing the previous record of 1.87 million set in October 2024.
But What About Vintage?
Let’s face it: vintage grading is a tiny speck of the overall market. There is a seemingly infinite supply of modern cards (with more released just about weekly). There will never be more vintage cards, although we can certainly expect massive raw collections to hit the market as Boomers continue to cash out, a trend Cardhound has analyzed here. And of course many if not most of the vintage monster cards have already been graded.
Here’s the breakdown by era. Let’s focus in on 1970’s and earlier, and sports only:
A key takeaway is this: PSA maintains market domination. They grade 10x as many cards as SGC overall.
But if we focus in on vintage only, PSA’s lead narrows significantly, to about 4x.
Interestingly, PSA’s lead in 1950’s and earlier, which is as close as we can get to Prewar with this data, is much larger than usual. And SGC’s jump in 1970’s is likely driven by a current grading special for 70’s and 80’s. (If you want to keep up with the latest SGC news, this post is regularly updated).
What to Watch for in 2025
As 2025 evolves some trends and developments I’ll be watching are:
- Will broader economic uncertainty persist and if so will it trickle into card grading and collecting in general?
- Will SGC innovate to gain share? Will we finally see a set registry, for example?
We will check in on these questions and more in the next PSA / SGC Grading Breakdown.
