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It’s common knowledge that ever since the NBA card market went off in 2020, the demand for grading has gone supernova. This surge for graded cards has caused PSA and BGS, two of the biggest grading companies, to halt their operations to clear their respective backlogs. The former, in particular, has been dealing with an astronomical number of cards on their end.
July 2021 @PSAcard Update
-Grading volume has been roughly flat in July (+1%) compared to June
-1990s basketball activity has slowed following the June surge as the spotlight shifts back to ultra modern
–@KDTrey5 cards have seen the biggest spike in grading activity during July pic.twitter.com/JxVixCgZvi— GemRate (@gemrate) July 27, 2021
According to data gathered by GemRate, a total of 599,999 cards have been graded by PSA for the month of July. Doing the math, that’s roughly 26,000 cards the company has graded each day. It’s also 1% higher than the total graded cards PSA has churned out a month earlier, GemRate added.
Majority of cards that were graded by PSA during the said period feature basketball players, which amounted to 214,000 submissions. Baseball came next with 164,000 while Pokemon cards are third with 89,000.
Surprisingly, the NBA player with the most card is none other than the Brooklyn Nets’ All-Star forward, Kevin Durant. His 2007 Topps rookie card had 24,000 submissions, which was 237% higher than those that were graded in June this year. Durant’s 2006 Topps McDonald’s All-American card was also the second-most graded card by PSA this July with 21,000 submissions accounted for.
While the Slim Repear’s cards were on the rise, the grading outlook on 1990s basketball cards fell by 36% this month. This means that PSA is grading more ultra-modern cards than last month.
Just by reading these numbers, collectors can get an idea of how massive PSA’s operation is right now. With this kind of effort, it will only be a matter of time before PSA clears its backlog and opens its services again to collectors.
