Who Owns PSA?

PSA was founded in July 1991 by David Hall, who had already built Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) in 1986. Hall saw that sports card collectors faced the same problem coin collectors had: without an objective third party grading a card's condition, buyers could not trust what they were purchasing, especially as valuable vintage cards changed hands.

The early years were difficult. Many dealers opposed third-party grading, fearing it would compress their margins, and PSA lost an average of about $10,000 a month for its first three years, staying afloat on support from PCGS. The turning point came as buyers began insisting on graded cards, forcing dealers to follow. By 1996 PSA was grading nearly 10,000 cards a month, and the 1998 McGwire-Sosa home run chase, which created huge demand for the players' rookie cards, accelerated adoption sharply.

In February 1999 Hall folded PSA and PCGS into the newly formed Collectors Universe, which went public later that year on Nasdaq as CLCT. As internet card trading exploded, PSA's volumes grew roughly fivefold to about 80,000 cards a month and it became the dominant name in grading, holding around 90% of the card grading market at that time.

The next two decades built PSA into the default grading standard. Its 1-to-10 grading scale became the hobby's shared language, and a PSA 10 grade became the benchmark for a card's condition and value. PSA/DNA extended the model into autograph and memorabilia authentication, and the company later added ticket grading.

The pandemic-era card boom overwhelmed it. Surging submissions forced PSA to suspend most service levels in early 2021 as backlogs ballooned, just as the Turner-led buyout closed that February. Under private ownership the company invested in capacity and technology to work through the backlog and resume full services.

The 2020s brought rapid expansion of the parent. Collectors sold the Goldin auction house to eBay in 2024 while simultaneously acquiring eBay's vault service, which PSA folded into its own vaulting offering. SGC joined the group in 2024, and new PSA grading hubs opened in Plano, Texas, and Boca Raton, Florida, in 2025 to scale capacity. In December 2025 Collectors agreed to acquire Beckett, which would bring the second most recognized grading brand into the same group while keeping it operationally independent.