Forty Pokémon cards were mailed out in a Value Bulk submission eight months ago by an Ohio collector who anticipated receiving them by late summer. They may still be in PSA’s Sun Valley warehouse, or they may be in a satellite facility in Texas or Florida. No one, not even PSA, seems to know for sure anymore.
The true cause of the 2026 grading backlog crisis is that uncertainty. What began in late May as a standard operational announcement has evolved into something more akin to a hobby-wide reckoning. Four of PSA’s most well-liked service tiers were put on hold on June 2 after the company’s backlog approached 10 million cards. PSA is known for its accuracy and authority. Industry trackers say that number surpassed 14 million within a week due to frantic last-minute submissions. No one in line benefits from the math. It takes more than a year to clear that queue at PSA’s claimed monthly rate of 2.2 to 2.5 million cards, not the four months the company initially promised.
It’s important to consider how peculiar this is for a business that has, by most accounts, never been larger. In 2025, PSA graded over 19 million cards, four times more than its nearest rival, CGC. Collectors, its parent company, recently invested $200 million in new facilities and more than a thousand new employees. Even so, the backlog continued to grow more quickly than the expansion could handle. The May 14 infrastructure announcement itself caused a 20 percent increase in submissions, adding 1.6 million cards virtually overnight, suggesting that PSA built its growth strategy around demand it could anticipate rather than demand it unintentionally created.
Right now, the tone of any trading card subreddit has changed from lighthearted complaining to something more akin to sincere annoyance. Cards that are stuck in “Assembly” or “QA” stages for weeks after their quoted windows are described by collectors. Others point out that PSA has asked customers to wait longer for less while raising prices twice in the last year. Tighter graded-card supply, after all, tends to support higher resale prices on PSA 9s and 10s already in circulation, according to a particularly blunt Reddit thread that received thousands of upvotes and accused the company of operating a business model that subtly profits from inconvenience.
It’s difficult to determine if that’s a planned tactic or just an unforeseen result of the explosive demand for Pokémon and TCG. TCG submissions increased 85% year over year in 2025 alone, according to PSA’s own data, a trend the company probably didn’t fully account for when it set its 2026 staffing goals. It’s possible that scarcity isn’t totally undesirable from a pricing perspective and that PSA is actually overburdened at the same time.
Collector behavior is gradually changing. To avoid wasting $80 on cards that are unlikely to grade Gem Mint, some are using AI-assisted pre-screening tools. While SGC, CGC, and Beckett extend their own turnaround times to handle the overflow, others are moving to these companies. Some are merely holding raw cards, awaiting the reopening of Value tiers before adding anything to PSA’s queue once more.
PSA has experienced backlogs in the past, most notably during the 2021 pandemic boom. Eventually, that pause ended, and the hobby continued. This one feels different, primarily due to scale and the fact that a published tracker is not sufficient to restore trust once it has been damaged. The cards might finally arrive in eight months. The question of whether collectors return with them is one that no one can truly answer at this time.
