Top 5 sports card grading companies:
- PSA – Professional Sports Authenticator – By far, the leader and most trusted grading authority
- BGS – Beckett Grading Services – Firmly #2, but very reputable. Those Pristine labels are highly desired.
- SGC – Sportscard Guaranty – New labels, and a long-time high reputation in the vintage market, they are seeing a bit of a surge
- HGA – Hybrid Grading Approach – Brand new, utilizing AI to grade, and doing something interesting (finally!) with label designs
- CSG – Certified Sports Guaranty – A long-time leader in comic book grading, they are dipping their toes in the card market. Their reputation as a company is stellar.
PSA is by far the most popular, but the surge in card grading popularity over the last year has put them far, FAR behind in keeping up with submissions. Perhaps new-comers HGA (check out those new label designs!) and CSG will start to pick up a lot of the market share. BGS and SGC have been around for a long time, and while both see surges here and there (SGC has got more popular with their new labels, but they have always been a leader – especially in the vintage market), they have remained firmly rooted in the #2 and #3 spots behind PSA.
Worst Card Grading Companies
Whether or not these companies are bad companies is irrelevant. In the hobby, these slabs simply aren’t desireable – for one reason or another. Mostly, these companies’ reputations are warranted. They simply do not hold their quality standards to the same degrees that the reputable and popular grading companies above do. In short, you may see graded, slabbed cards by the following companies, but if your intention is to have a card graded with the highest caliber scrutiny, don’t waste your time on these. Even a “gem mint” card graded by GMA will simply not sell for more than the raw price of that card.
GMA – Grading and Authentication, GRA, CSA, RGA, USA, VSA, PRO, GEM, FGA, CSC, and the list goes on and on.
In short, if a slabbed card doesn’t have PSA, BGS, SGC, HGA, or CSG on the label, take a pass.
A quick comparison of relative PSA, BGS and SGC grades:
| SGC | PSA | BGS |
| 100 Pristine | n/a | 10 Pristine |
| 98 | Gem-Mt 10 | 9.5 |
| 96 | 9 | 9 |
| 92 | 8.5 | 8.5 |
| 88 | 8 | 8 |