I had to share this because that is an insane amount. I wonder how many of these cards are < $50. It would be cool to see which Charizard/Pika/Mew card were graded the most as well.
PSA Slabbed - End of Year Recap 2023 (psacard.com)
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So pikachu, charizard, and mew are the most popular Pokémon, got it. Bye bye moonbreon
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Grading is out of control and unsustainable in pokemon
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Facebook would like to have a word with you: “Get it graded” in every Pokemon post showing a pull
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Just to put this in perspective, 4.4M / 365 = 12,000+ cards graded each day. And that’s assuming they take no holidays or weekends off, which they do. 
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Facebook was so bad in 2020/2021. People said to literally grade everything. I knew then that by the time these cards came back, they were worthless comarer to the grading fees
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Is number 1 and number 3 still on the shelves to buy how is this possible lol
Good thing I deleted my Facebook in college
I see the bad moon a-risin’…
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Pokémon cards graded by PSA:
2020: 300k
2021: 1.4m
2022: 3m
2023: 4.4m
Do you think this year is the peak or will 2024 be bigger?
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That altaria is so random as a number 2 lol
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I’ve heard employees have unlimited overtime.
Crazy to think that in 2018 people would come to the forum and ask why PSA does/doesn’t do certain things and the answer would be that Pokémon was too insignificant to them. Professional “Sports” Authenticators.
And we had multiple discussions about whether Pokémon would be bigger than MTG. We left Magic in the dust years ago. To think we would double the volume of baseball and all other sports is really significant. In such a short time too.
Proposal to rebrand PSA to “Pokémon Species” Authenticators.
From the bit of insider knowledge I have about PSA, it seems this reality of TCG (formally “non-sports”) > Sports (I suggest we rename as non-TCG) just hasn’t been reflected in their internal structuring. In other words, they still don’t treat Pokémon as #1 in terms of the internal hierarchy of career employees.
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I am guessing it will take 3-5 years of Pokémon being their #1 category before they make structural changes to reflect that. Corporations move so slow when the rest of the world moves so quickly
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If Zard, Pika, and Mew are 1, 2, and 3, I wonder which place Guzzlord got. I would assume 4 or 5.
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This is similar to the 80s baseball boom. Millennials are getting into their careers and collecting their childhood. It will be interesting to see how PSA prioritizes Pokémon, especially if this volume sustains.
One achievement sports still has over pokemon is the amount of high end cards. This might also be a thing of the past one day as rarity awareness is higher today than a few years ago.
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Wow, talk about supply supply supply! Demand may still be high, but supply is still clearly higher!
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100% agreed. There should be a lag time too because we don’t know how long the current volume will last.
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So with weekends, holidays and normal working hours that’s easily 20+ cards every second
Coventions already have “PSA 10 $10 Slab boxes”, looks like $5 and possibly even lower could be in the near future.
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