Leading trading card grader PSA to grow operations in Canada, Europe and Japan

PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator), the trading card industry’s largest grading and authentication company, will expand its footprint outside of the United States in 2025, PSA president Ryan Hoge said in a recent interview with The Athletic.

PSA will open an expanded operation in Canada, moving their base to Toronto from Halifax, Nova Scotia. They’ll also set up shop in Europe with offices and a submission center in Germany. Thirdly, the company will move into a larger facility in Tokyo after initially setting up operations in the Japanese capital in 2023.

Hoge wouldn’t put a firm timetable on when the offices in Toronto and Germany would open. The exact location for the German office is also yet to be determined. Hoge said the move to a larger facility in Tokyo would occur during the first three months of this year. It’s the second major expansion in Japan since opening their first office in the region six years ago.

Although sports trading cards have traditionally been most prominent in the United States, they’ve increasingly gained a foothold among collectors around the world in recent years while the popularity of trading card games (TCGs) like Pokemon have continued to explode globally.

And as cards of all kinds are now more widely viewed as alternative investments with the potential to be worth millions, the demand for authentication and grading — an attempt at standardizing assessments of condition that drives value — has skyrocketed. In 2024, more than 20 million trading cards were graded by the four major grading companies (PSA, CGC, SGC and Beckett) and more than 15 million of those were graded by PSA, according to GemRate, which tracks graded card populations. The TCG category accounted for eight million of the 20 million total, while the top sport, baseball, accounted for 4.2 million.

🚨2024 Grading Year in Review

📊20 million cards were graded across the four major graders in 2024. Total cards graded is ⬆16% compared to 2023 (17 million).

📊11.4 million sports cards (⬆25% YoY) and 8.6 million TCG (+ non sport) cards (⬆6% YoY) were graded in 2024.… pic.twitter.com/7ULR94IPe9

— GemRate (@gemrate) January 3, 2025

The primary challenge in the grading process, however, is the need to mail cards off to the grading companies in order to have them assessed and encased to protect their condition, then sent back. This is a particularly costly and time consuming process for collectors in other parts of the world, as the major grading firms are primarily based in the U.S.

Hoge spoke with The Athletic in December about the upcoming expansion. Here’s a selection of topics the PSA president discussed, along with my analysis:

Canadian expansion

“So we’ve got a relatively small office in Nova Scotia (established in September 2023) and we are relocating that to the outside of Toronto,” Hoge said. “It’s going to be a bigger operation that’s going to actually allow customers to submit cards directly there. We’re going to have the technology behind it too, so they’ll have a tailored mobile and a web experience with a unique shipping address so the customers don’t have to navigate customs and deal with taxes and all of that. …

“I think part of it is (shipping) time, part of it is also complexity. I think if you’re shipping in-country versus having to go across the borders, it’s just easier, it’s cheaper, you’re not having to pay additional fees. Even if you’re going from Toronto or Vancouver and you’re shipping to California, you’re still having to navigate the customs forms. It can be confusing moving product in and out of the country versus if you’re shipping in country. We take care of all of that because it’s kind of in our network at that point. So it’s more about easing the use and cost. …

“We think that there’s a lot of headroom to expand demand for our services in those countries, which is why we’re reaching out. We have seen faster growth rates, 50 percent year over year growth from Canada, which is higher than the business overall is growing. And then the vast majority of card types that we’re seeing from Canada — hockey far and away is the No. 1 category that we see from that market, but there’s interest in other sports and TCGs like Pokemon cards as well coming from that market.”

Analysis: As of Jan. 5, there are more than 2.67 million hockey cards graded by PSA all time — a number that could rapidly grow by leaps and bounds as a result of this move.

How that growth in PSA-graded population impacts the hockey card market will be interesting to watch, though. On one hand, this could lead to more valuable hockey cards getting graded (could we finally see a third PSA 10 O-Pee-Chee Wayne Gretzky rookie card pop up as a result of this?). Conversely, the increase in population counts for graded hockey cards could put a damper on values of previously graded cards as supply increases.

The positives of increased commerce in the hockey market and a potential uptick in the general engagement of the trading card hobby in Canada should outweigh the concerns over population count increases, though.

European expansion

“We’ve been watching for a couple of years now where we’re seeing growth from different European countries, and even the UK,” Hoge said. “We’ve seen really good growth coming from different countries. When we dialed into specific countries to see where volume’s coming from versus others, Germany stood out as far as volume. We actually had members of our team that went to multiple conventions and shows and met with local card shop operators. We have kind of a partner network where they help facilitate submissions so customers can work through kind of a trusted PSA partner in these countries. They’ll submit and so we were able to have good conversations with them, get insights into trends and behavior that they saw. And then we talked to the manufacturers, as well. Topps has their European operations in Germany and other manufacturers are there, as well.

“Now there are grading companies in that market, too, that are localized, that are regional for, say, all of the EU. There’s Italian-specific grading companies, French grading companies, UK grading companies, and so collectively I think it’s pretty disparate, but we still see PSA as the leading brand there.

“But again, similar to Canada, I think there’s just a lot of friction and concerns that you’re having to ship overseas. Maybe you’re not comfortable working through a partner network. You’d rather deal directly with PSA. So after looking at the market for about a year and a half, we’ve kind of lasered in on what our approach is gonna be, what country we want to set up operations in, in our march to have that facility open in 2025.

“One of the other unique things is when you look at the mix of trading cards that are coming from Europe, heavily dominated by TCG — so, Pokemon — and soccer, which is not surprising, but it’s very heavy.”

Analysis: The fact Germany stood out in terms of volume of trading card submissions to PSA makes more sense than some might think. There’s a reason the NFL has expanded the league’s reach to Germany with multiple games played there the past couple of seasons and with more on the way in the future. It has the largest economy in Europe, which means plenty of people with disposable income to put into trading cards. It also probably doesn’t hurt that Topps has one of their European offices in Frankfurt, signaling a wider push for the industry to make significant inroads in the area.

Just as the Canada expansion should have a significant impact on the hockey card market, the German expansion should have a similar impact on the soccer card market.

PSA’s current standing in Europe

“I think PSA already is the leading grading company in Europe, but I think we have the ability to have more people become active graders,” Hoge said. “I think there’s a larger percentage of collectors who don’t grade cards. I think there’s a level of education that’s maybe required on the benefits of why grade your cards. But then, similar to Canada, I think that there’s real cost and time and complexity challenges that people have wanted to avoid, both on shipping to us in the States and then even paying for return shipping. Sometimes return shipping can be very expensive, so it makes it cost prohibitive.

“Where if we have local facilities, the customers are able to ship (more conveniently) and it can cut things down dramatically. A lot of customers will look at the cost of shipping to and from, and then divide it by the number of cards they’re grading and so they’ll kind of just do the math and say, ‘Wow, you know, this is adding several more dollars or euros to the price of each card to get it graded.’ Then the economics start not looking as good for them. And so we think that this is a way to address that, to provide faster turnarounds, but then also just better economics for the customers.”

Analysis: If PSA can be the U.S.-based grading company to change the economics of grading for international collectors and reduce the points of friction for them, then they could further increase their already commanding global market share in the space. A more robust global network could also present the ability to facilitate easier buying and selling between PSA customers in different parts of the world. This is an industry that requires the frequent exchange of physical goods between a large number of people. The logistics of that can be an inhibitor to growth, especially globally. The potential to reduce that friction is meaningful.

All together, this expansion could have far-reaching implications for the global trading card market in the coming years.

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(Top photo of collectors waiting to drop off cards at PSA’s booth at the 2024 Sports Card and Memorabilia Expo in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)