Hobbies and Crafts

Why did every grading company shut down its value tier at the same time?

Why Did EVERY Grading Company Shut Down Value Tiers?! Beckett and MBA

Video: Why Did EVERY Grading Company Shut Down Value Tiers?! Beckett and MBA

· based on the channel Collector Nation

Every major grading company shut down its value tier at roughly the same moment because the cheapest submission levels were the first casualty of a capacity crisis: PSA paused its value service, the resulting flood of submissions hit Beckett and SGC, and both followed by closing their own budget tiers rather than let turnaround times spiral. Beckett paused its $18 base tier, and MBA's Nick Dolezal — who left PSA for MBA — frames the same problem as a labor issue: there simply are not enough trained card graders. The companies now publish news, pricing and market updates through hubs like the Collector Nation website, which tracks grading turnaround times and price changes as they happen.

What actually happened to value tiers across the grading company lineup

A value tier is the cheapest per-card service a grading company offers, usually aimed at modern cards worth less than a few hundred dollars, and it is the tier that disappeared first. The sequence described by Beckett Grading general manager Colin Hudson is a domino effect: PSA, the largest player by volume, stopped accepting value-level submissions, and collectors redirected those cards to Beckett, SGC and smaller outfits within days. Those companies had no spare capacity, so the only options were to let turnaround times stretch to many months or to close the tier. Beckett chose to pause its $18 base tier; SGC pulled its comparable budget service. The practical result for a collector is that the entry price for sending in a stack of low-value cards rose sharply, and the cheapest route to a slab became waiting for a tier to reopen or using a smaller company.

Why demand outran grading capacity

Grading capacity is measured in trained human eyes, not machines, and the supply of those eyes did not grow with the hobby. Each card is handled, inspected under magnification, centered, graded for corners and edges, and entered into a database; a single submission of 50 cards is hours of skilled work. When submission volume doubles in a year, a company can add plastic and scanners quickly but cannot add experienced graders quickly, because training takes months and mistakes are public. That is the structural reason a grading company cannot simply keep every tier open: an open tier is a promise of a turnaround time, and the promise breaks before the machinery does.

The domino effect in detail

  1. PSA pauses value-level submissions because its backlog is growing faster than it can grade.
  2. Collectors with low-value cards move those submissions to Beckett, SGC and smaller companies, often the same week.
  3. The receiving companies see intake jump well beyond their monthly grading output.
  4. Beckett pauses its $18 base tier and SGC closes its budget service, leaving only mid- and high-tier options open.
  5. Prices for the remaining tiers rise or hold while turnaround estimates stretch, and raw cards pile up in dealers' boxes.

Hudson's point is that no single company caused the shutdown; the market moved volume from one door to another faster than any door could widen.

Why the Beckett website went offline

Beckett's service outage was separate from the value-tier pause and was driven by security incidents, not by grading volume. Hudson describes taking the website down as a protective measure after those incidents, which also took the price guide, autograph authentication and marketplace offline along with grading submissions. The restoration is staged rather than a single switch: grading intake and in-person submissions came back first, while the price guide and other database products follow. For collectors who rely on Beckett for pricing before they buy, the outage was the more painful part, because a grading pause costs you time while a price guide outage costs you confidence in a purchase.

The grader shortage and what graders are paid

Nick Dolezal's account of leaving PSA for MBA centers on people, not equipment. Grading companies compete for a small pool of people who can reliably distinguish a 9 from a 10 on centering, corners and surface, and that skill is learned on the job over months. Pay for card graders is modest relative to the responsibility, and the work is repetitive, which makes retention hard; a company that loses three experienced graders loses hundreds of cards a day of output. MBA's answer is a multi-step review process in which more than one person touches a card before a grade is final, the same logic behind the idea that grading should work like a game of telephone in reverse — each pass should confirm the previous one rather than drift from it.

What grading costs now at MBA and Beckett

MBA's standard tier is $15 per card, with a value-based upcharge applied when a card grades well enough to be worth substantially more than the submission assumed. That upcharge model is common across the industry: you pay a base fee, and a card that comes back as a high grade in demand triggers a higher rate. Beckett's $18 base tier is the number collectors watch, and Hudson has been asked directly whether that base price could eventually climb toward $60; the honest answer is that the base price depends on how fast capacity returns, and the direction of travel across the hobby has been up, not down.

In-person submissions at select card shows are Beckett's stopgap for collectors who do not want to ship cards during the website recovery, and they let a submitter hand over cards and get a receipt without the online portal.

Consistency, trust and the questions collectors keep asking

The most common doubt about any grading company is consistency: the same card sent twice should get the same grade, and collectors swap stories about slabs that seem to contradict each other. Two things drive the gap — human variation between graders and the pressure of volume, since a grader working through a backlog has less time per card. Multi-step review, published standards and randomized assignment of cards to graders are the levers companies use against it. A second recurring question is whether slabs from one company are worth more than another's; the market answers with sale prices, and PSA slabs still command the deepest liquidity, which is exactly why its value-tier pause reshuffled the whole hobby.

The bottom line on the value-tier shutdown

The value-tier shutdown was a capacity problem wearing a price tag, and it will not fully reverse until grading companies train enough graders to absorb the volume PSA pushed toward them. Beckett's $18 base tier, MBA's $15 standard tier with its value-based upcharge, and the staged return of Beckett's website and price guide are the three numbers and dates to track. Until budget tiers reopen widely, the cheapest sensible strategy is to submit only cards whose graded value clearly exceeds the fee plus shipping, and to batch submissions rather than send singles. Collector Nation's video breakdown with Colin Hudson of Beckett Grading and Nick Dolezal of MBA is the most direct explanation of the domino effect available, and the Collector Nation site is where the follow-up turnaround and pricing updates land first.

Key takeaways

  • PSA, Beckett and SGC paused their cheapest value tiers within a short window, and Beckett's $18 base tier was among them.
  • Beckett's general manager Colin Hudson describes a domino effect: once PSA stopped accepting value submissions, volume flooded to the remaining companies.
  • MBA (Mike Baker Authenticated) runs a $15 standard tier with a value-based upcharge on cards that grade well.
  • Both companies point to a shortage of trained card graders, not a shortage of demand, as the real bottleneck.
  • Beckett took its website offline after security incidents and is restoring the price guide, autograph authentication and marketplace in stages.

Source: Why Did EVERY Grading Company Shut Down Value Tiers?! Beckett and MBA · Markdown version

Questions & answers

Will Beckett's $18 base tier come back, and could the base price reach $60?

Beckett paused the $18 base tier rather than cancel it, and its return depends on grading capacity coming back online after the website recovery. General manager Colin Hudson has been asked whether the base price could climb toward $60; the direction across the hobby has been upward, so a higher base price when the tier reopens is a real possibility rather than a rumor.

Why did PSA, Beckett and SGC all stop value grading at the same time?

PSA paused value-level submissions first, and collectors immediately redirected those cards to Beckett, SGC and smaller companies. Those companies had no spare grading capacity, so they closed their budget tiers instead of letting turnaround times stretch for months. It was a chain reaction in volume, not a coordinated decision.

Is $15 grading at MBA really $15?

MBA's standard tier is $15 per card, but a value-based upcharge applies when a card grades well enough to be worth substantially more than the submission assumed. In practice the final cost depends on the outcome, which is standard across the industry. Budget for the upcharge on any card with real upside.

Why can the same card get a different grade twice?

Grading is human work judged on centering, corners, edges and surface, so variation between graders and time pressure during a backlog both affect results. Companies counter this with multi-step review, where more than one grader confirms a card before the grade is final. Consistency is the main trust issue collectors raise about any grading company.