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PSA's September 2025 update adds $2–$5 to bulk tiers and five additional business days to key service levels. Here's the playbook to keep your submissions profitable with CardGrade.'s AI triage.
In short: PSA raised prices twice during 2025 and then paused its four Value tiers entirely in June 2026 — the cheapest open tier is now Regular at $79.99. This post documents the 2025 trajectory. For today's prices, see PSA Value tiers paused 2026 and pre-screen every card before paying.
PSA raised prices twice in 2025. The first increase hit in early 2025, and the second came in September when PSA bumped Value Bulk from $19.99 to $21.99, Value from $24.99 to $27.99, and Value Plus from $39.99 to $44.99. Turnaround times stretched alongside the price hikes: Value Plus went from 20 to 25 business days, Value Max from 15 to 20, Regular from 10 to 15, and Express from 5 to 10.
PSA's reasoning: demand is high and quality takes time. The company graded 8.89 million cards in the first six months of 2025, per GemRate data. With submissions at record levels, PSA argues that higher prices and longer turnaround are necessary to maintain grading consistency.
For collectors, the math has changed. Here's how to adjust your submission strategy so that rising grading costs don't eat your margins.
PSA's pricing trajectory over the past five years tells a clear story of rising costs:
Pre-pandemic (2019): Standard grading was around $10-15 per card for bulk submissions. Express services existed at premium tiers, but the baseline cost for grading a card was minimal.
2020-2021 boom: Demand exploded during the pandemic trading card surge. PSA paused submissions entirely in March 2021 due to overwhelming volume. When they reopened, pricing had increased dramatically, with bulk submissions jumping to $50+ per card at their peak.
2022-2023 normalization: Prices came down from pandemic peaks as demand stabilized. Bulk and value tiers returned to the $15-20 range.
2024: Value Bulk at $19.99, Value at $24.99, Value Plus at $39.99.
2025 (September): Value Bulk at $21.99, Value at $27.99, Value Plus at $44.99. Additionally, PSA tightened the Gem Mint 10 centering standard from 60/40 to 55/45.
February 2026: PSA announced another services update, signaling that price adjustments are now a regular occurrence rather than exceptional events.
The trend is unmistakable: PSA pricing only goes in one direction. Every year, the break-even threshold for profitable grading submissions moves higher.
| Service Level | Price Per Card | Turnaround | Max Declared Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Value Bulk | $21.99 | 65 business days | $499 |
| Value Bulk (consolidated) | $24.99 | 65 business days | $499 |
| Value | $27.99 | 45 business days | $499 |
| Value Plus | $44.99 | 25 business days | $999 |
| Regular | $79.99 | 15 business days | $2,499 |
| Express | $149.99 | 10 business days | $4,999 |
| Super Express | $299.99 | 5 business days | $9,999 |
Additional fees apply for cards exceeding declared value thresholds.
The break-even formula for any card submission is:
Graded Value - Raw Value > Submission Cost + Shipping
At PSA's current $27.99 Value tier with approximately $3-4 per card in proportional shipping costs, you need each card to gain at least $31-32 in value from grading to break even.
Here's how that plays out across card values:
$15 raw card:
$40 raw card:
$100 raw card:
The pattern is consistent: with $28+ per card in grading fees, every grade below your target erodes or eliminates profit. And because only 30-40% of modern cards submitted to PSA earn a Gem Mint 10, the average unscreened submission loses money on the majority of individual cards, propped up by the winners.
This is the single most impactful change you can make. Stop submitting cards based on gut feeling and start screening with data.
Run cards through CardGrade's AI pre-grading before committing to a PSA submission. The AI evaluates centering, corners, edges, and surface condition against PSA's grading standards (including the new 55/45 centering threshold). Cards that don't show strong PSA 10 potential get filtered out before you spend $28 each.
A collector screening 25 cards and submitting only the top 10 saves $419.85 in submission fees. If those 10 cards have a higher Gem rate than an unscreened batch of 25, the ROI improvement compounds.
Start with the free centering tool to eliminate cards that fail the 55/45 test, then use full AI pre-grading for the survivors.
The PSA Collectors Club costs $99 per year and provides:
If you submit more than 10-15 cards per year, the membership pays for itself through per-card savings. For high-volume submitters (50+ cards annually), it's a no-brainer.
Group submissions through authorized PSA dealers can access bulk pricing that individual collectors can't. Several online services pool submissions from multiple collectors to hit minimum card counts for the lowest per-card rates.
The tradeoff: longer total turnaround (your cards wait until the group fills the batch) and less control over the process. But the per-card savings can be $5-10, which adds up quickly on larger submissions.
PSA's price increases make alternatives more attractive than ever for cards below $50 raw value.
CGC starts at $17 per card for standard grading, roughly 40% cheaper than PSA's Value tier. For Pokemon TCG cards, CGC slabs are well-accepted by the collector community, and the resale discount vs. PSA is smaller in the TCG market than in the sports card market.
TAG Grading offers Value Bulk at $15 per card (20-card minimum), with technology-backed grading and impressive slab design. TAG is newer and resale values are less established, but the per-card savings are meaningful at scale.
SGC at approximately $24 per card with faster turnaround is particularly strong for vintage cards where SGC's expertise and the "tuxedo" slab carry real market value.
See our grading company comparison for a detailed breakdown of each company's strengths and pricing.
This is the simplest adjustment: be pickier about what you submit. At $28 per card, don't submit anything you're not confident will earn PSA 9 or above AND where the graded value meaningfully exceeds the raw value plus fees.
A practical threshold for 2025-2026: only submit cards to PSA where the expected PSA 10 value is at least 3x the submission cost ($84+), and you have strong confidence the card will earn a 10. For cards where a PSA 9 is the likely outcome, only submit if the PSA 9 value exceeds raw value by at least $40.
This means fewer submissions but higher per-card profitability. The cards that don't meet the threshold can be sold raw, graded by a cheaper company, or held for a future batch.
Price increases get the headlines, but turnaround time increases have their own cost. When PSA stretches Value from 30 to 45 business days, or Regular from 10 to 15, your capital is tied up longer.
For a dealer who submits $5,000 worth of raw cards per month, extending turnaround by 15 business days means an additional $5,000 in inventory sitting in PSA's queue rather than generating revenue. Over a year, that's $60,000 in working capital trapped in transit.
Strategies to manage turnaround cost:
PSA's pricing will continue to rise. The company has a monopoly position on resale value, and as long as PSA 10s command significant premiums over CGC 10s and SGC 10s, collectors will pay PSA's prices. The company knows this.
The smart response isn't to stop grading with PSA. It's to be more selective about which cards get the PSA treatment. Pre-screen aggressively, diversify across grading companies based on card value and intended use, and treat every submission as an investment decision with quantifiable expected returns.
Cards that clear your screening threshold and earn PSA 10 will be more profitable than ever, precisely because rising costs are discouraging marginal submissions and reducing population counts for borderline cards. Fewer PSA 10s in the market means higher per-card value for the ones that do exist.
The collectors who adapt to rising prices by improving their screening process will thrive. The ones who keep submitting everything at $28 per card will watch their margins evaporate.
Pre-screen your cards before your next PSA submission →
2025 pricing history referenced from PSA's submission updates page. Confirm current pricing before submitting — tiers and fees change frequently.
Pre-screen your cards before submitting to PSA, BGS, or CGC. Plans from $4.99/mo.
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Founder, CardGrade
Jamie Budesky is the founder of CardGrade and the engineer behind its AI vision grading pipeline. An Army veteran and IT specialist (DoD, since 2017), he writes about card grading, AI/ML grading technology, and collecting strategy — grounded in CardGrade's own grading data.
PSA paused its Value tiers, TAG closed its core submission tiers, and CGC turnaround stretched past 120 working days. Inside the May 2026 card grading backlog — and how to pre-screen with AI before you wait months in line.
PSA is pausing Value Bulk, Value, Value Plus, and Value Max tiers on June 2, 2026, due to a backlog approaching 10 million cards. With the cheapest open tier now $79.99 per card, here is how to decide which cards are worth submitting — and how to pre-screen before you pay.
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