Card grading giant PSA nets $200 million investment for expansion

Professional Sports Authenticators (PSA) is set to receive a $200 million investment from its parent company, Collectors, according to an announcement on Thursday.

The purpose of the investment is to help “grow the company’s physical footprint, develop and deploy new technology and hire for 1,000 open and planned positions through 2026,” per The Athletic.

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Those in the collectibles or card-collecting game are very familiar with PSA. It is considered the top option when submitting a trading card or collectible to get “graded.” A PSA-10 grade is the highest possible grade and tends to substantially increase the product’s value.

Conversely, a low grade from PSA — like an 8.0 or below — tanks the item’s worth. The lone stipulation is that if somehow your item is graded a PSA 1, the lowest possible grade, some collectors actually hunt for those grades, and it does have some merit.

PSA is the industry leader in grading collectibles. The main product is trading cards, and in 2025, PSA graded over 19 million cards. Their largest competitor reportedly graded only about 5 million cards.

While 19 million is extremely impressive, it is also up 2 million from 2024, indicating a clear need for expansion to meet consumers’ ongoing needs.

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Collectors president Ryan Hoge spoke with The Athletic about the investment and planned expansion.

“ To maintain the PSA standard at this scale, we have to grow holistically. This expansion impacts the entire life cycle of a collectible—from a larger, more efficient receiving and logistics area to an expanded grading floor that accommodates our growing team.

We are also significantly increasing our PSA Vault footprint to ensure we provide the most secure environment for the high-value collections entrusted to us.”

Part of the expansion and investment will be to create more than 1,000 new jobs at the company. Those who submit cards for grading will likely be intrigued by this option, as currently it can take up to 160 business days to receive your graded submission back from the company, depending on the level of service you pay for.

So far, PSA has graded more than 8 million cards in 2026, a 39% year-over-year increase. This is a trend that is measured and that Hoge says is part of why the expansion is necessary.

“We do not view the current demand as a temporary surge.

The global collecting community has experienced a historic and sustained boom, and the market has fundamentally matured. … Every dollar of this $200 million is backed by exhaustive data modeling to ensure we are building a sustainable infrastructure that protects the health of the hobby for the next decade, not just the next month.”

PSA is headquartered in Southern California but, over the last five years, has opened additional facilities in Florida, New Jersey, Texas and Tokyo. Each grader at the company must go through “Graders University,” a collectors’ training program for product trading, and part of the investment will go toward streamlining and expanding that venture, per Hoge.

“A portion of this investment is dedicated to ‘Graders University,’ our industry-leading training program. Every new PSA grader must complete this rigorous curriculum and execute thousands of supervised evaluations before grading independently.

Part of our $200 million commitment is integrating new technology directly into that training process and expanding education on emerging counterfeit techniques, ensuring our experts have the best possible education before they ever touch a customer’s card.”

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The hobby has a history of predominantly being focused on sports cards. In more recent years, increased interest in Pokémon, trading card games (TCG), and non-sports cards led Collectors to increase their efforts to expand to meet the ever-increasing demands of the public.

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If the numbers continue to increase the way they have for PSA, this may not be the last expansion in the company’s future.