Welcome to another Vintage Grading Report, October 2024 edition! Another month in the books, and another all-time record for total cards graded in a month: 1.87 million cards! Let’s dig into the Gemrate data for October with an eye on PSA and SGC for vintage.
In the Facebook groups, the chatter has been about a “down” and “slow” vintage market lately. And late fall is often a slow market anyway. So I was surprised that both PSA and SGC were way up, both month over month and year over year.
Market Share Trends Continue
And that bump isn’t just TCG. Other recent trends continue: PSA domination in terms of raw numbers, and then it’s CGC (grading mostly TCC) and SGC (grading mostly sports), with Beckett on life support. Here’s the sports-only breakdown which shows big gains overall in the category:
Can SGC Make Gains in TCG?
Do I care? Not really. But here’s a side note: even in its diminished state, Beckett continues to grade more than 3x as many TCG (Pokemon etc.) as SGC, 24k vs. just 7k. SGC’s attempts to make inroads into modern and TCG just do not appear to be succeeding on any kind of scale.
Personal opinion? The SGC tux is friendly to prewar and vintage, and clashes a bit with TCG especially. It will take innovation, not just cheap grading specials, to move the needle here.
And SGC has been on the sidelines regarding innovations, while PSA has rolled out improved plastic, UV protection, grader’s notes, and more.
SGC, to its credit, has stuck to its hallmark: solid, affordable, timely service and consistent grades. I just think it will take more than that to gain TCG and modern market share.
OK What About Vintage?
Who are we kidding? You don’t care about Pokemon cards. How’s vintage looking? Let’s focus on PSA and SGC, the only real players in the vintage market.
Prewar Trends
Gemrate doesn’t break out Prewar specifically. Instead, everything “1950’s and earlier” is lumped together. But another trend that continues: while PSA is grading almost 10X as many total cards as SGC, the “1950’s and earlier” category is closer: 33k PSA vs. 15k SGC. This is about the same “spread” we have seen for the last several months, as evidenced in a similar August report, for example.
I’ll request that Gemrate start categorizing Prewar specifically, and then another category for 1950’s only–that is more meaningful for vintage folks. I’ll guess that SGC is the market share leader for Prewar–or at worst, it’s a very close race. That reality supports my own personal opinion that SGC is, and will likely remain, a Prewar grader first and foremost.
Vintage Market Share Overall
Let’s look at vintage more broadly (1970’s and earlier, let’s say). These categories combined represent 7.8% of PSA’s total business, and 20.8% of SGC. Using Gemrate data we can calculate that this represents about 113k vintage cards graded for PSA, and 34k for SGC.
So, the “2x” volume lead for PSA in 1950’s and earlier grows to a little over 3x for vintage overall. This is still a narrow gap compared to overall volume differences–more proof that SGC remains a vintage specialist grader.
Market Implications?
If the sales market seems slow or sleepy, that’s in stark contrast to the grading activity overall, which is way up, even for just vintage. Typically, in a slow market, grading activity also slows. Maybe those reports are just anecdotal. But if grading activity is any measure of the market as a whole, things seem very sound at the moment.
