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Hoge said that before the pandemic, most PSA customers sending in Pokémon collectibles would reserve grading only for the rarest, most valuable, and pristine trophy cards.
“But now you’re seeing more people grading, say, the full art cards that you can get out of newer packs, the newer boxes,” Hoge said.
Almost half of the submissions received by PSA this year are from new customers, he added.
Big business for nostalgia-craving millennials
Customers typically spend about 5% of their card’s value on grading, and it costs a minimum of $15 to send in a collectible to PSA.
According to Hoge, PSA caps its prices at a $500,000 card value, so record-breaking cards like the Pikachu that sold for $5.2 million wouldn’t necessarily fetch the company $250,000.
Most customers wait a maximum of two months for their graded card, which returns with a rating between 1 and 10. A higher number indicates better quality, with 10 representing brand-new condition.
That rating usually determines the sale price of a collectible. One mint-condition Pokémon card with a rating of 10 sold for $420,000, even though more than 100 copies of the same card on the market bore the same grading.
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Hoge believes the company is seeing the early stages of a Pokémon collectibles industry that’s here to stay beyond millennials. Nintendo has been banking hard on getting today’s generations of children — even toddlers and babies — hooked on its fantasy animal species.
Hoge said that since PSA went private in February 2021, its total staff has surged from 600 to 1900 across California, New Jersey, and Japan.
“I don’t think we’re going to see the kind of insane behavior we saw in 2020 and 2021,” he said. “But I think we’re in a healthy state for the business with a lot of active participants.”