Grading gets a lot of attention for something that touches so few cards. The grading companies handled more than 16.1m Pokémon cards in 2025, which made Pokémon 60.5% of everything they graded, sports included. Against what TPC prints in a year that is 0.15–0.18%, on our estimate. The largest grader now handles about seven times as many Pokémon cards as it did in 2021, and all of the fees stay with the graders.
Three-fifths of all grading is Pokémon, and it is under a fifth of one per cent of a year’s print
A grader checks that a card is genuine, scores its condition out of ten and seals it in a labelled case, after which the card trades with its score attached. GemRate, which tracks grading labels, counted 26.6m cards graded across the major companies in 2025, the most in any year, and more than 16.1m of them were Pokémon. At PSA, the largest grader, Pokémon went from 17% of cards graded in 2018 to 43% in 2023.
Against the factory the figure is small. TPC made 9–11bn cards in the year to March 2026, so a year of grading equals 0.15–0.18% of a year of printing. The cards worth the fee are the rare ones, which are about 2% of the cards opened in a modern English set; how sets are built around them is on Trading cards. Fig. 1 sets the two shares side by side.
Pokémon is 60% of the cards graded, and that is under 0.2% of a year’s print
Pokémon’s share of all cards graded in 2025, against the share of a year’s print that was graded. Grading in a year includes older cards.
PSA grades about seven times as many Pokémon cards as in 2021, and its capacity sets the pace
PSA handled 1.4m Pokémon cards in 2021. For 2025 it reports more than 11 million trading-card-game cards, most of them Pokémon, from which we estimate 9.5–10.5m, about seven times the 2021 figure. Sources for 2023 disagree, from 4.4m to 6.4m, so Fig. 2 draws that year as a range. Across all graders, Pokémon volume at least doubled between 2023 and 2025.
These counts measure what the graders could process. PSA’s backlog peaked in 2026 at about 7.5 months of its own output, so the cards graded in a year are fewer than the cards collectors sent. Nor do they follow the newest sets. Through the summer of 2026 grading volumes set records while sealed boxes of that year’s sets lost value on the resale market.
PSA now grades roughly seven times as many Pokémon cards a year as in 2021
Pokémon cards graded by PSA, millions, calendar years. The 2023 bar is a floor with a range, because sources disagree. The 2025 bar is our estimate.
- Pokémon cards graded by PSA
- 2023: other sources say up to
Show the numbers
| Year | Pokémon cards graded by PSA, m cards | 2023: other sources say up to, m cards | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | – | ||
| 2023 | |||
| 2025 | (9.5–10.5) | – |
Pokémon cards graded by PSA. 2021 is PSA data via Axios. 2023 is a floor (PSA’s recap: more than 4.4m). 2025 is an estimate of 9.5–10.5m: PSA reports more than 11m trading cards, “most” of them Pokémon.
2023: other sources say up to. Three figures disagree for 2023: more than 4.4m (PSA recap), 5.8m (43% of PSA’s 13.5m, our calculation) and 6.4m (Axios chart). None is averaged.
The fees go to the graders
Grading is priced per card and by speed. PSA’s Standard service was reported at $59.99 a card from September 2026, with cheaper bulk tiers below it. PSA’s parent, Collectors Universe, was taken private in February 2021, so its fee income has to be modelled. At an assumed average of $15 to $30 a card, its Pokémon grading brings in $167–333m a year on our model. TPC sells the pack at list and takes no part of the fee, the auction premium or the marketplace commission. What graded cards then sell for is on Collector market.
What it adds up to
GemRate’s count of cards graded in 2026 is due in January 2027.