{ "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-grade-a-pokemon-card", "slug": "how-much-does-it-cost-to-grade-a-pokemon-card", "title": "How Much Does It Cost to Grade a Pokémon Card?", "summary": "$59.99 is the cheapest service level PSA sells today, and the fee steps up with the value you declare. On one panel of 1,568 English cards, grading pays on 95.8% at a $20 fee, the cheapest of the $20 to $25 fees that 39 figures in our own library still assume, and on 45.2% at the fee each card actually buys.", "section": "Quant research", "published": "2026-10-10", "readMinutes": 16, "publisher": "moonstone", "findings": [ { "value": "$59.99", "measures": "cheapest PSA tier a submitter can buy", "basis": "published Standard service level, read September 23, 2026" }, { "value": "45.2%", "measures": "of panel cards where grading still pays", "basis": "708 of 1,568 English cards, at each card's own tier" }, { "value": "95.8%", "measures": "of the same cards at a $20 fee", "basis": "1,502 of 1,568, at the cheapest fee our older pieces assume" }, { "value": "-$5.98", "measures": "expected value of the middle card", "basis": "against +$35.04 a card at a $20 fee" } ], "tables": [ { "title": "Seven cards in eight buy PSA's cheapest tier", "columns": [ "Service level", "Published fee", "Insures a declared value up to", "Cards that buy it", "Grading pays at that fee", "At a $20 fee" ], "rows": [ { "Service level": "Standard", "Published fee": "$59.99", "Insures a declared value up to": "$1,000", "Cards that buy it": "1,367 of 1,568", "Grading pays at that fee": "38.3%", "At a $20 fee": "95.2%" }, { "Service level": "Priority", "Published fee": "$79.99", "Insures a declared value up to": "$1,500", "Cards that buy it": "48", "Grading pays at that fee": "100.0%", "At a $20 fee": "100.0%" }, { "Service level": "Express", "Published fee": "$199", "Insures a declared value up to": "$2,500", "Cards that buy it": "49", "Grading pays at that fee": "87.8%", "At a $20 fee": "100.0%" }, { "Service level": "Super Express", "Published fee": "$349", "Insures a declared value up to": "$5,000", "Cards that buy it": "74", "Grading pays at that fee": "89.2%", "At a $20 fee": "100.0%" }, { "Service level": "Premier", "Published fee": "$599", "Insures a declared value up to": "$10,000", "Cards that buy it": "30", "Grading pays at that fee": "93.3%", "At a $20 fee": "100.0%" } ] }, { "title": "Three cards where the staircase decides it", "columns": [ "Card", "Raw", "PSA 10 median", "Gem rate", "Tier its declared value buys", "Expected value at a $20 fee", "At the real fee" ], "rows": [ { "Card": "[Blastoise (Base Set, card 2 of 102)](/card/base1-2)", "Raw": "$222.69", "PSA 10 median": "$7,700.00 (6 sales)", "Gem rate": "0.7%", "Tier its declared value buys": "Premier $599", "Expected value at a $20 fee": "+$606.72", "At the real fee": "+$27.72" }, { "Card": "[Venusaur (Base Set, card 15 of 102)](/card/base1-15)", "Raw": "$168.98", "PSA 10 median": "$3,240.00 (5 sales)", "Gem rate": "1.2%", "Tier its declared value buys": "Super Express $349", "Expected value at a $20 fee": "+$328.68", "At the real fee": "-$0.32" }, { "Card": "[Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat](/card/svp-085)", "Raw": "$1,015.89", "PSA 10 median": "$2,825.00 (259 sales)", "Gem rate": "42.4%", "Tier its declared value buys": "Super Express $349", "Expected value at a $20 fee": "+$486.84", "At the real fee": "+$157.84" } ] }, { "title": "Every piece of ours that still prices a submission at the old fee", "columns": [ "Piece", "Published", "Fee it assumes", "Figures" ], "rows": [ { "Piece": "[Is Grading Pokémon Cards Worth It? 2,633 Answers](/articles/is-grading-pokemon-cards-worth-it)", "Published": "2026-09-22", "Fee it assumes": "$20", "Figures": "9" }, { "Piece": "[The Fee Is a Fixed Cost](/articles/the-fee-is-a-fixed-cost)", "Published": "2026-09-03", "Fee it assumes": "$25, plus a $20 rung", "Figures": "6" }, { "Piece": "[The Grading Frontier](/articles/the-grading-frontier)", "Published": "2026-08-04", "Fee it assumes": "$25", "Figures": "6" }, { "Piece": "[Where Money Went to Die](/articles/worst-pokemon-investments-decade)", "Published": "2026-07-26", "Fee it assumes": "$22", "Figures": "4" }, { "Piece": "[Grading ROI, Computed Honestly](/articles/grading-roi-for-the-cards-you-own)", "Published": "2026-08-26", "Fee it assumes": "$20", "Figures": "3" }, { "Piece": "[The Ask Is Lying to You](/articles/the-ask-is-lying-to-you)", "Published": "2026-08-30", "Fee it assumes": "$20", "Figures": "2" }, { "Piece": "[The First Negative Stamp](/articles/the-first-negative-stamp)", "Published": "2026-08-30", "Fee it assumes": "$20", "Figures": "2" }, { "Piece": "[The Umbreon Standard](/articles/the-umbreon-standard)", "Published": "2026-08-28", "Fee it assumes": "$20", "Figures": "2" }, { "Piece": "[Thirty-Two Days After We Called the Mania](/articles/thirty-two-days-after-the-mania)", "Published": "2026-09-29", "Fee it assumes": "$20", "Figures": "2" }, { "Piece": "[Everyone Grades the Freebies](/articles/everyone-grades-the-freebies)", "Published": "2026-08-28", "Fee it assumes": "$20", "Figures": "1" }, { "Piece": "[Fifteen Tens From 12,323 Tries](/articles/fifteen-tens-from-twelve-thousand-tries)", "Published": "2026-09-21", "Fee it assumes": "$25", "Figures": "1" }, { "Piece": "[The Grading Tax](/articles/grading-tax)", "Published": "2026-08-06", "Fee it assumes": "$25", "Figures": "1" } ] } ], "charts": [ { "title": "Where grading still pays, by what the PSA 10 actually sells for", "unit": "%", "note": "Share of cards with positive expected value at the fee each card's declared value buys. The figure under each bar is the same share at a $20 fee, the cheapest of the three amounts our older pieces assume. Each band runs from its lower bound up to but excluding the next. 1,568 English cards, October 10, 2026.", "points": [ { "label": "PSA 10 under $50", "value": 0, "basis": "71.7% at $20 · 113 cards" }, { "label": "$50 to $75", "value": 0, "basis": "91.7% at $20 · 206 cards" }, { "label": "$75 to $100", "value": 3.1, "basis": "93.2% at $20 · 161 cards" }, { "label": "$100 to $150", "value": 16.9, "basis": "97.8% at $20 · 225 cards" }, { "label": "$150 to $200", "value": 45.5, "basis": "100.0% at $20 · 143 cards" }, { "label": "$200 to $250", "value": 57.3, "basis": "100.0% at $20 · 110 cards" }, { "label": "$250 to $350", "value": 75.2, "basis": "99.3% at $20 · 141 cards" }, { "label": "$350 to $500", "value": 84.7, "basis": "100.0% at $20 · 111 cards" }, { "label": "$500 to $1,000", "value": 96.8, "basis": "100.0% at $20 · 156 cards" }, { "label": "$1,000 and up", "value": 92.1, "basis": "100.0% at $20 · 202 cards" } ] }, { "title": "Standard takes 48.3% of the payout, Premier 9.5%", "unit": "%", "note": "The published fee as a share of what a PSA 10 hands its seller after eBay's fee. Each bar is the median of the per-card ratios inside its tier group, computed card by card and then ranked, which is a different figure from the fee divided by the net of that group's median ten. Grouped by the tier each card's declared value buys. 1,568 English cards, October 10, 2026.", "points": [ { "label": "Standard $59.99", "value": 48.3, "basis": "median ten $143.75 · 1,367 cards" }, { "label": "Priority $79.99", "value": 7.2, "basis": "median ten $1,328.44 · 48 cards" }, { "label": "Express $199", "value": 12, "basis": "median ten $1,920.00 · 49 cards" }, { "label": "Super Express $349", "value": 10.7, "basis": "median ten $3,775.00 · 74 cards" }, { "label": "Premier $599", "value": 9.5, "basis": "median ten $7,300.00 · 30 cards" } ] } ], "sections": [ "Five service levels, and a ceiling on each", "What tripling the fee does to the answer", "Look up one number before you fill in the form", "The cheapest tier is the one that hurts", "Thirty-nine figures on this site run on fees nobody can buy", "For four cards in five we can't answer this at all", "What to do with the twelve cards in the shoebox" ], "method": [ "Population: report_features, our nightly scored-card table, build stamped October 10, 2026, joined to the English catalogue. 2,612 English cards carry a PSA 10 sold median on five or more recorded sales, and 2,611 of those also carry a live raw market price; 2,611 is the denominator for the guaranteed-ten line and for the break-even share. 1,589 of the 2,611 also carry a PSA 9 sold median on five or more sales and a PSA registry gem rate. 1,568 of those have a PSA 10 median at or under $10,000, PSA's highest published ceiling, and are the panel every expected value figure here is computed on; the 21 above it are left out, because PSA quotes its Premium service levels per item and we would be inventing the fee. Graded medians are the headline figure our card pages print: the median of the recent verified-sale window where we hold one, 90 days for most rows and 180 or 365 where the recent window is wider, with the sale count quoted beside it, gated at five sales and at 0.5x to 45x the raw price, which drops grade-inverted and runaway comps out of the window. Gem rate means the share of graded copies that came back a 10; ours are PSA registry proportions from our population snapshots, read off the trusted pair of readings for that registry line. Every gem rate in the panel is a recorded one, and a card with no gem count drops out before the arithmetic; the lowest rate that survives is 0.73 percent. Raw prices are the canonical printing market price our card pages show; for three of the eleven cards named here (Mega Darkrai ex, Mega Charizard X ex and the SWSH050 Charizard V) it differs from the bare TCGplayer product row by under four percent, because the card carries more than one printing row. Fees are published third-party figures held in one file, src/lib/grading-fees.ts: PSA's trading card service levels and eBay's non-store Trading Cards final value fee of 13.25 percent to $7,500 and 2.35 percent above that, plus $0.40 an order over $10 and $0.30 at or under, both read on September 23, 2026. ONE LIMIT ON THAT: the June 2 pause, the September 14 Standard reopen and the four paused tier names are quoted from that file, which was first committed on September 23, 2026, and nobody in this chain has re-read PSA's own page since. If PSA has reopened its value tiers, every share in this article moves. Expected value per submission = gem rate x the PSA 10 median net of eBay's fee, plus (1 minus the gem rate) x the PSA 9 median net of eBay's fee, minus the raw price, minus the grading fee. That is a two-outcome model: the ten, and everything else valued at the nine. It is generous on the downside, since a card returning a 7 does not fetch the nine's price, and conservative on the payout, since both graded legs are net of the selling fee while the raw card is charged in full. Our earlier grading pieces used a three-outcome model with a sub-nine salvage term and no selling fee, so their figures are comparable with these only in direction. The guaranteed-ten line weighs only the PSA 10 median against the raw price and the fee, on the full 2,611. Medians use the upper-middle value on even samples. The corpus audit counted every $20, $22 or $25 amount in src/lib/articles.ts and src/lib/studies appearing within 120 characters of the word fee or the phrase 'a submission' in a grading context, walking the article objects field by field and cross-checking against a raw scan of the source text. That is 39 figures across 12 of the 223 pieces published before this one, which quotes the old fee only as history. Twenty-two of the 39 are $20, thirteen are $25 and four are $22. Amounts with further digits after a point or comma are not matches, which is what keeps $22.50 and $20,550 out of the count, and a sensitivity rung inside a fee ladder does count, which is why [The Fee Is a Fixed Cost](/articles/the-fee-is-a-fixed-cost) contributes a $20 rung alongside its five $25 figures. Two matches were read and set aside as prices: a $25 price band in [Where the New Slabs Go](/articles/where-the-new-slabs-go), and a $25 ask threshold in [Pokémon Card Ask vs Sold Price, Measured](/articles/pokemon-card-ask-vs-sold-price) where the nearby word 'fees' means postage and packing. Not counted anywhere above, because no figure we can cite applies to every reader: shipping to PSA and the insured return leg; shipping and insurance to the eventual buyer; PSA Collectors Club membership, where the chosen tier requires one; penny sleeves, semi-rigids and submission supplies; value-based upcharges PSA applies when the graded card is worth more than the declared value; payment processing or sales tax beyond eBay's published final value fee. Nothing here is financial advice." ], "terms": "Figures are moonstone's own recorded measurements, dated as published. Quote them with the population stated beside them. The article at `url` is the human form of this file." }