SGC Follows PSA, Introduces Price Increase for Card Grading

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Pre-War Cards

The popular grading company has raised its rates for submissions

Around the beginning of March, PSA introduced a drastic price increase for grading cards. Whether by coincidence or reaction, now SGC is doing the same.

Reactionary or not, it doesn’t really matter. The reality is that SGC bumped its standard size service from $15 to $25 as announced in a recent State of the Union of sorts:

While we’re incredibly proud of our accomplishments and bursting at the seams with excitement, there is one catch. In order to continue to provide you with the service that you deserve, SGC quite literally has no choice but to raise our prices from a base rate of $15/card to $25/card. As unnatural as it feels to increase prices so drastically, we have already seen a tremendous uptick in business from word of mouth alone. Basically, a submitter got his/her cards back extremely quickly from SGC. They told their friends. Their friends submitted, received the same service, and told their friends. With more people made aware of our current turnaround time, our submissions have substantially increased.

SGC’s full prices can be seen here.

The same thing that I said about PSA’s price hike applies here, too. This essentially will allow SGC to make money while doing a lot less work for it. And that’s just the nature of business. Companies are constantly trying to increase revenue while increasing their ability to earn it.

Now personally, stuff like this doesn’t throw me out of the graded card game. I’ll still pursue graded cards when buying something a bit more expensive. But what it will do is keep me from subbing much on my own.

Case in point — I had a stack of about 50 cards waiting to be sent in for grading but I’d been waiting for turnaround times to improve, which they have. But many of these cards are valued around $100. Some less. I can’t justify spending $25 on a card (plus the shipping and return shipping cost) to grade them. Financially, it doesn’t make much sense. At $10 or $15 a card, I’m in. $25? We need to talk. That $25, too, is only for cards valued at under $500. Like PSA, the prices go up if you are submitting more valuable cards.

There are still cards I’ll submit for grading these days. But they’ll likely be reserved for stuff a little more expensive as opposed to just grading a fairly low-dollar card to have it in a slab.

Finally, we’ve seen the introduction of a fourth reputable grading company, CSG, which has a $15 economy option. It will be interesting to track their growth and see if these increases send more business their way.