PSA Grading Price Increase 2025: How to Protect Your Submission ROI
PSA Grading Price Increase 2025: How to Protect Your Submission ROI
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.
CardGrade.io Editorial·Published Jan 26, 2026 · Updated Feb 21, 2026·8 min read
PSA Grading Price Increase 2025: How to Protect Your Submission ROI
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 Pricing History: A Steady Climb
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.
The trend is unmistakable: PSA pricing only goes in one direction. Every year, the break-even threshold for profitable grading submissions moves higher.
Current PSA Pricing (Late 2025)
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
Walk-Through
$599.99
2 business days
$24,999
Additional fees apply for cards exceeding declared value thresholds.
How Price Increases Affect Break-Even Calculations
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:
Needs to grade PSA 10 and sell for $47+ to break even
PSA 9 selling for $25 = net loss of ~$18
PSA 8 selling for $18 = net loss of ~$25
Verdict: Only submit if you're highly confident in a PSA 10 AND the PSA 10 value is strong
$40 raw card:
PSA 10 selling for $130 = profit of ~$58
PSA 9 selling for $55 = profit of ~$13
PSA 8 selling for $42 = net loss of ~$22
Verdict: Profitable at PSA 9+, but the margin at PSA 9 is thin
$100 raw card:
PSA 10 selling for $350 = profit of ~$218
PSA 9 selling for $140 = profit of ~$8
PSA 8 selling for $105 = net loss of ~$23
Verdict: PSA 10 is highly profitable; PSA 9 barely breaks even
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.
Five Strategies to Protect Your ROI
1. Pre-Screen Everything
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.
Free submissions included with certain membership tiers
Access to PSA's Set Registry
Vouchers and promotional credits
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.
3. Use Group Submissions
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.
4. Consider Alternative Grading Companies for Lower-Value Cards
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.
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.
The Hidden Cost: Turnaround Time
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:
Use higher service tiers only for time-sensitive cards (new releases where prices peak early)
Batch submissions strategically (submit right after new set releases when demand and value are highest)
Consider CGC or SGC for cards where faster turnaround matters more than the PSA brand premium
The Long View
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.
The CardGrade.io editorial team writes about card grading, AI technology, and collecting strategy. Our guides are researched against official PSA, BGS, and CGC standards.
