As a kid I never really paid much attention to PSA, I knew they were leaders in authenticating, but in terms of grading, I told myself they were the cheaper, less important brand.

Boy was I wrong… Today, PSA is right up there in the ranks with BGS, some might say they are even more popular than Beckett’s brand. I know they are winning when it comes to price. What’s their claim to fame? The PSA Registry. Collectors can display and organize their sets by utilizing this tool, it lets them know what card they need and what their set completion percentage is. Because of this tool, people are more fancy to buying PSA then they are BGS, as they want that cohesiveness… I guess I’m not the only one who cares after all?

What else makes PSA special? They don’t have subgrades, I know to some that might seem like a bad thing, but it’s not… Let me tell you why.

The Future of Cards

Screenshot from Stockx

Currently, there are 3 places to consistently buy cards online, eBay, COMC, and forums, however, in the future, I think the world of buying sports cards will look a lot different.

How many of you have heard of The Pit? It’s a sports card exchange, basically, it allows you to sell cards as if they were stocks. How many of you have heard of StockX? They have a similar platform, except they consider themselves the stock market of things, they too are beginning to list sports cards.

These types of markets will continue to emerge and sports cards are the perfect commodity… if you don’t complicate them. These platforms will likely not list raw base cards because of the quality control, it would take forever for them to receive cards, look them over and then grade them, so they’re more likely to list these items using a 3rd party grader. BGS is an option as they are respected (somewhat) amongst the community, however, the multipliers make this extremely hard to do so. What if an investor prefers 9.5 centering over 9 corners. What if I only consider a GEM MNT card as all 9.5? There are so many variables that go into a BGS grading system, thus making them harder to list.

A seller or exchange would essentially have to list multiple variations of the card… This is likely not going to be the case. Either that or consider all 9.5 as true gem mint cards, this may happen, but won’t bold over well with investors/collectors.

This is where I think PSA will continue to have a leg up against BGS. Their grading system is tough, but it’s simple. Exchanges could simply say PSA 10 and that’s what the user would get, same with the grades underneath that. You can already see this happening over on Stockx… But I could be wrong.

Aside from the future exchange, I think new collectors will be looking for a more cohesive set of cards when it comes to buying. The world is based on ecosystems, rarely do you see a house with some Google products and some Amazon products, people are typically all or nothing, I don’t think that will change with cards.