Like SGC and Beckett, PSA Continues to Experience Major Card Grading Delays

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Pre-War Cards

The popular third party grader is seeing major backups in grading cards

I don’t know that I’d file this under the ‘news’ header since I think PSA’s delays in grading cards has been widely discussed in other forums. But since I recently wrote about adjustments made first by SGC and then later by Beckett (both due to an increase in demand for grading services), I wanted to check in on PSA as well, in the interest of fairness.

PSA, like the others, is also experiencing major backups. News on their site indicates that while they have added capacity to grade more cards, they are still quite behind.

How far behind?

On their news page updated today, it mentions there is a potential for a seven-week backup just for the initial processing. Specifically, they say delays of ‘up to’ seven weeks to have your order opened and processed, so it may not take that full amount of time. Still, as you can see, your cards could be sitting there for quite a while before they are even opened/processed for grading.

After that waiting time, there are further anticipated delays for the actual grading. PSA’s website sort of outlines what kind of a wait collectors may experience by showing the average estimated wait time for cards to be graded. Note that those times shown are in addition to that ‘up to seven-week’ wait time.

But even that’s not too helpful given that different collectors request different levels of service. In other words, if you request a service level with a usual wait time of, say 45 days, 37 days sounds great. If you request a 10-day service level, though, and it takes 37 days to get your cards back, that’s obviously a problem. Unless I’m misinterpreting the statistics on the site incorrectly, they are not disclosing the wait times for each level of service (in terms of days for each service level) — they are only showing what appears to be an aggregate average across all of the service levels (i.e. 1-day, 10-day, etc.). So that makes it hard to get a handle on what kind of delays you can really expect for, say, a 10-day submission vs. one that’s supposed to take 45 days.

And when you factor in the mailing time each way, collectors are looking at a very long time to receive cards back — particular ones that weren’t sent with expedited grading time requests.

In other words, expect continued delays from all three companies.