2023 Pokemon Card Grading Statistics: A Detailed Look at PSA, CGC, SGC, BGS

[pfm]

Data sourced from GemRate

Grading Trends | GemRate

Total cards graded in 2023 across all companies

	Total	TCG	% TCG
	13.5M	5.7M	42.2%
	1.7M	1.4M	82.3%
	1.2M	125k	10.4%
	772k	372k	48.2%
All	17.2M	7.7M	44.7%

Notable points

• Almost half of all cards graded in 2023 were TCG, presumably most are Pokemon
• CGC is almost all TCG SGC almost all sports
• PSA and BGS split equally between TCG and sports
• About 20% increase in cards vs 2022 (roughly an additional 3.5M)
• About 60% increase in TCG/non-sports cards vs 2022 (see below)

TCG/non-sports cards graded in 2023

---

Cards graded per month

Notable points

• PSA with a strong upward trend until March 2023
• BGS with a stagnating, arguably downward trend
• CGC has a spike in October, presumably due to a single mystery box customer

---

Gem Mint+ rate

Era	10	10+	9.5+
1990s	14.1%	19.2%	15.4%
2000s	20.9%	22.8%	18.6%
2010s	50.5%	40.8%	54.1%
2020s	68.9%	62.3%	79.4%

Notable points

• PSA was the strictest for vintage
• CGC was strictest for modern
• BGS “gem mint+” is relatively less strict for modern
• Difference between “vintage” and “modern” (pre/post 2010) is apparent across all 3 companies

[bk2021]

7.7m graded TCG cards lol

Who is absorbing all of this?

[Will]

More annual stats from Gemrate:

Anything here that surprises you? Any insights on the data?

[palamec1a]

Do we have any information on the strictness of PSA 10 vs BGS 10 (rather than BGS 9.5)? That would be really interesting.

I’m assuming BGS Gem mint + is 9.5 and above

[lamplamp]

But how will this affect the market/my investments???

[pfm]

Is the Pokemon card market stagnating?

I went to an event recently. There were a lot of vendors and comparably not many attendees. The impression I got was that it was hard to sell things and virtually no vendor was buying anything. One thing I’ll note is that nearly every vendor sold the same kind of things. Just a combination of the following: vintage English binder with very played cards modern sparkly binder, with Japanese and English golds, supporter, alts etc. CGC junk slabs, modern 10s, NM graded vintage the occasional more…

[pokecollectoramy]

Does anyone have proof that the massive upshift in CGC is all due to omega? That would means tens of thousands of these mystery boxes which seems crazy to me lol

[Rattlesnake]

Why is there just a massive gap in Gem rates between TCG and sports for PSA, Beckett and CGC? 2010 has a massive gap but the 2020 gem rate is pretty much double. Seems massive.

Also the amount of graded cards for TCG is unfathomable. Will be interesting to see how the market absorbs that supply and how new demand for graded cards will change/grow in the future.

[suicune]

I think a more plausible answer might be the relabel and the submission of 9.5s to 10s?

[jac2357]

Cgc aligning it’s pokemon percentages with psa as I said ages ago. Earlier stuff was graded way harsher and slowly loosening til they match as was expected.

[pfm]

Someone feel free to correct me but i believe the number was 200k cards which would be 20k mystery boxes. It roughly checks out with the graph

[jac2357]

I envisage a scenario where going for a psa 10/psa 9 won’t be enough with modern it’ll be a cgc pristine 10/gem mint 10 that they go for. Remember you heard it here first folks lol.

[Ratequaza]

Looking at Moonbreon as a modern example with a large sample size we have 26.7% 10s for BGS (adding 9.5s we would get to 83.4%) and 75.8% 10s for PSA.

And for vintage I took a regular base set charizard as an example with large sample size. There we have basically 0% 10s for BGS (one single card) or 4.2% including 9.5s. For PSA we have around 0.87% 10s

Using some less famous / popular cards as a sort of control group (I randomly chose Gardevoir EX from Sandstorm and Tyranitar V AA from Battle Styles) we get 0% BGS 10s, 23.3% BGS 9.5s and 7.14% PSA 10s for the vintage card and 5.4% BGS 10s, 56.4% BGS 9.5s and roughly 58% PSA 10s

So TLDR: It’s roughly BGS 10 >> PSA 10 > BGS 9.5 in terms of rarity of the grade being awarded.

[wisewailmer]

That already exists. There needs to be a grade above gem mint for modern cause every toddler can open a pack and get a 10

[jac2357]

Exactly why grade if it’s almost certainly a psa 10 without grading. Cgc did the math lol. People grading modern including my brother are experiencing odd bum grades in amongst their 9s and mostly 10s to keep the overall percentages from being even higher.

The Martian | "Do The Math" | Official HD Clip 2015

[pfm]

Or alternatively we as a hobby, or at least as individuals, can choose to not place significant extra value on “condition” for items that are easily obtainable in mint condition.

[wisewailmer]

that ship has sailed unfortunately

[pfm]

I will ride that ship down to the depths of the ocean as it’s captain.

Fortunately no one can control what I buy so I’ll happily take the money saved by avoiding artifical premiumization and instead buy actually rare items.

[wisewailmer]

I legitimately have ocd and I am so freaking thankful that I never fell for the 10 or bust mindset. saved me so much stress and money to be able to be happy with 9s