A rough size for card-grading fee revenue

What this is

A rough size for card-grading fee revenue: PSA’s 2025 fees about $290–580m, of which Pokémon about $170–330m; all grading companies about $320–665m.

How it’s built

1. PSA graded 19.26m cards in 2025 (GemRate data via the press); multiplied by an assumed average fee of $15–30 per card.
2. Pokémon portion: 57.7% of PSA’s volume. Other graders priced at $12–25 per card.
3. History: PSA’s former parent reported average fees rising from $7.41 to $10.27 per card, years to June 2016–2020, about 8.5% a year.

What we assumed

• PSA’s blended 2025 fee is $15–30 per card.Its 2024 minimum was $15 and bulk tiers were $21.99–27.99 after September 2025; the true mix of tiers is unknown.
• Pokémon is 57.7% of PSA’s 2025 volume.This rests on an estimate of PSA’s Pokémon count that the research itself flags as at or above a stated ceiling, so it may be high.
• Other grading companies charge $12–25 per card.The research gives no direct evidence for this range.

Sanity check

Collectors, PSA’s owner, last reported more than $300m of revenue in 2021, a press figure; the low end of the 2025 range sits close to that.

Where it comes from

Our calculation from other figures in the trainer’s notes:

• ReportedPSA grading minimum fee, June 202415 $ per card
• ReportedPSA Value Bulk fee, effective 25 Sep 2025; Value 24.99→27.99; Value Plus 39.99→44.9922 $ per item (from 19.99)
• EstimateCollectors Inc. revenue (reported by OCBJ), 2021>300

Where it’s used

• Deep dive · Trading cardsGrading: most of the graders’ work, a sliver of the print