If you have not checked grading company pricing or turnaround pages since the summer, the landscape has moved more than once since then. PSA launched a new budget tier, Beckett has paused and reopened its cheapest services twice, and SGC quietly stopped being the inexpensive alternative it was known for.
None of this happened in one clean announcement. It unfolded across several separate changes between June and October 2026, and a collector checking just one outdated blog post could easily submit to the wrong company at the wrong price.
This is a straight timeline of what is actually confirmed, company by company, with the specific dates and numbers behind each change.
We are skipping the general which-company-is-best debate here. If that is what you are after, our existing PSA vs. BGS vs. SGC comparison guide covers that ground. This post is only about what changed recently.
PSA's submission backlog peaked at roughly 14 million cards in June 2026, after a May 14 pricing update triggered a 20 percent spike in submissions and added about 1.6 million extra cards to the queue almost overnight.
By early September that backlog had fallen to roughly 9.9 million, and it continued sliding toward approximately 9 million through early-to-mid October, the first time it has dropped below 10 million in months.
PSA announced a new Standard tier on September 9, 2026, and opened it for submissions on September 14. It is priced at $59.99 per card, carries an estimated 90-to-100 business day turnaround, and caps insured value at $1,000.
Express pricing moved up to $199 in the same reorganization, and PSA opened a new grading facility in Frankfurt on September 15 to add international capacity. PSA's four Value tiers remain paused, a status unchanged since June 2, 2026.
PSA has tied the Value tier pause to an operational backlog milestone rather than a calendar date: the company has indicated it wants the queue down to roughly 5 million units before reopening Value submissions.
At a backlog near 9 million in October and falling by a few hundred thousand cards per month, a realistic reopening window lands somewhere in late 2026 to early 2027, assuming submission volume does not spike again the way it did in May.
Beckett paused Base and Standard online grading submissions on August 5, 2026, citing a 102 percent year-over-year increase in total cards submitted and a 159 percent increase specifically in TCG cards graded.
Beckett hit its own target and reopened both tiers on September 15, 2026, with Base at $17.95 (about 75 business days), Standard at $34.95 (about 45 business days), and Express at $79.95 (about 15 business days).
That reopening did not hold. Beckett paused Base and Standard submissions again less than two weeks later, redirecting new submissions toward Express instead, with no announced date for Base or Standard to return as of this writing.
Beckett has described this as an ongoing, demand-responsive policy rather than a one-time event, meaning either tier could reopen and pause again without much advance warning. Check Beckett's own submission page directly before mailing anything in, rather than trusting any single article's snapshot of current status.
SGC raised its cheapest Standard-tier price from $15 to $50 per card on September 2, 2026, a roughly 233 percent increase that ended SGC's long run as the inexpensive, fast alternative to PSA.
SGC advertises a 40-plus business day turnaround at that tier, but real-world submissions have consistently run 60 to 80-plus calendar days, with cards reportedly sitting in a Received status for two to four weeks before entering the actual grading queue.
Collectors Holdings, PSA's parent company, acquired SGC back in February 2024. Reporting this year has pointed to SGC graders being reassigned toward PSA's own Boca Raton operations during PSA's backlog crunch, which would help explain why SGC's real-world pace slipped even as its price jumped.
We cover the ownership side of that story, including a live antitrust case tied to it, in a separate guide on the PSA-SGC-Beckett consolidation.
At the cheapest tier each company currently offers, PSA Standard runs $59.99 for 90-to-100 business days, Beckett Standard runs $34.95 for roughly 45 business days when the tier is actually open, and SGC's $50 Standard tier advertises 40-plus business days but has recently taken 60-to-80-plus calendar days in practice.
None of the three currently offers a fast, cheap combination the way the hobby was used to a year ago, which is the real throughline connecting all of these separate changes. With submissions sitting in queue for months either way, an EVORETRO graded card storage box with a TSA lock is worth having on hand for the slabs already back in your possession.
Yes, at $59.99, since PSA's Value tiers remain paused as of this writing.
Status changes frequently; Beckett paused both again within weeks of its September 15 reopening, so check Beckett's submission page directly.
SGC raised its cheapest tier from $15 to $50 on September 2, 2026, citing rising demand and expanding turnaround times.
PSA has tied reopening to the backlog falling near 5 million units, realistically late 2026 to early 2027.
Whichever company's current pricing and turnaround works for your budget, a card is only as safe as its packaging on the way out the door. EVORETRO's magnetic PSA slab case is a simple way to keep an already-graded card secure while a new submission works through the queue.
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