Aggie Class of 2026 said:
StewRo said:
Has anyone use a service to grade a possibly high value baseball card? If so, how was the experience? I have 2 rookie Rickie Henderson's that are in excellent shape, i'm just not sure how excellent they are.
Stewart
Could anyone here shed some light on this topic?
I'd like to know the cost of sending out a single card to be graded through PSA? Also, any advice on sending a card to then?
Thanks in advance
You got it.
So PSA offers different tiers depending on how expensive the card will be-
https://www.psacard.com/services/tradingcardgradingFor cards that are cheaper than $200 or $500, I go through a friend who is an expert at this stuff and she has a Collector's Club membership (I think it's $100 a year). She ships out a LOT of cards and does all the packaging. I pay her the grading fee (either $15 or $18 depending on the projected value) and then a little bit extra to handle the packaging and shipping.
If you don't have a collector's club membership and the card's worth is under $500, you can have it graded for $25, or $40 if you want it expedited.
When I had a purple refractor Ohtani rookie card, it was a bit more to grade it- $75 because that card was worth almost $2000 as a 10. The $75 is steep, but the value of a Gem Mint rating was FAR more than a raw card. And at that price tier, it had a super quick turnaround- less than a week.
You also have to pay shipping for them to send it back to you which is like $20 because it's insured. Also a bit steep.
PSA has a shipping guide:
https://www.psacard.com/info/shipguide I've done this where I just got 2 pieces of cardboard, cut the cardboard so that it was the size of the box, taped them together with the card between them (in a penny sleeve which was inside of a Card Saver, of course), and put them in the box with bubble wrap above and below.
You can also buy pre-made shipping kits that are nice, although again expensive.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/196350829108 I used one of those kits for my Ohtani card and felt
supremely confident that it was going to be safe, and it was. Since this kit can handle submitting like 20 cards, I sent in a lot of cards because I didn't want to spend $20 on the kit to ship a single card.
So let's say you're wanting to grade a single card. If it's going to be less than $500, you can have it graded for $25 plus the shipping fee, $19.99 and whatever it costs you to put together the box to send them. If your card is worth more than $500, it goes up from there and it may be worth buying one of those grading kits to send it in. What is $20 to make sure that a $500+ card is completely protected?