Beckett Grading Services Pauses Most Options to Clear Backlog

Following the lead of PSA, which also saw overwhelming demand, Beckett Grading Services will stop accepting most card grading submissions on Monday as it works to clear its backlog.

The company made the announcement on its website this week, in a post discussing its plans for the National Sports Collectors Convention in Rosemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago, on July 28-Aug. 1.

Beckett to Only Offer Premium Level Grading in Immediate Future

The post from Beckett Collectibles President Jeromy Murray discusses the company’s lack of a price increase and its hiring of more employees in recent months before hammering readers with the most important news of the suspension of most grading services – burying the lead, if you will.

Murray announced that Beckett will only grade cards at its premium level, which costs $250 with sub-grades, $125 without. All lower-tier services, including express, standard and economy, sent after Monday will be returned to customers, ungraded.

“The reason behind this decision is simply to allow us to focus on the growing backlog we have and to get as many cards back to customers as possible, before the National. This is not ideal for anyone but something our competition has done,” Murray wrote, alluding to PSA, which suspended most of its grading services in March.

“We now feel this is right the move for Beckett,” Murray wrote. “Again, this is going to be temporary and something we believe will improve our availability for the remainder of 2021 and into 2022.”

Murray also said in the post that Beckett plans to provide grading and authentication services at the national convention.

BGS Follows Lead of PSA Due to Overwhelming Demand

As the sports card market has boomed over the past year, grading services such as PSA and BGS have been swamped by submissions. More collectors and investors chase those gem mint grades to boost their card values.

PSA President Steve Sloan previously noted that PSA’s submissions increased more than 20 fold over the past year. “The sheer volume of orders that PSA received in early March has fundamentally changed our ability to service the hobby,” Sloan said.

PSA hopes to reimplement all of its grading services by next month. Murray didn’t specify in his post when Beckett hopes to come back online.

Collectors have complained about the wait times they’ve had to endure to get their submissions returned. That problem isn’t exclusive to Beckett, as most grading services have experienced delays in the past year. Blowout Forums user Triple B noted this week that they’ve had four cards waiting for grading by BGS since July 2020.

“The good news is that it’s money in the bank as all four cards have exploded in value,” Triple B posted. “The bad news is that they still have my cards and NONE are showing in their pop report, so they still haven’t been graded (I assume).”

“I’m done, Beckett. No more business from me after 23 years as a customer.”