PSA, SGC, CGC or TAG? Which Graders Non-Sport Card Collectors Use, and What the Holder Costs

A grade is supposed to describe the card. On the non-sport cards this index tracks, the name on the holder moves the price almost as much as the number on it. Here is who grades what, and what a copy in a holder other than PSA's costs at the same grade.

Most of these cards are not graded at all

Start with the obvious. Across the 1977 Star Wars and 1966 Batman cards on this index, roughly seven in every ten copies offered are ungraded. For 1962 Mars Attacks and the nineteenth-century tobacco cards from Allen & Ginter and Duke, it is about half.

The exception is the 1940 Superman set. Barely one copy in ten offered is raw. Cards that old and that valuable tend to change hands in holders.

Who grades what

Among the graded copies, PSA leads in every franchise. But how far it leads depends a great deal on the cards.

1940 Superman: about eight in ten graded copies are PSA, and nearly all the rest SGC.

1962 Mars Attacks: about three-quarters PSA, about a tenth SGC, with TAG and KSA making up most of the rest.

1977 Star Wars: about seven in ten PSA, about one in eight SGC, then TAG, CGC, Beckett and KSA in small numbers.

1966 Batman: about six in ten PSA. This is where the newer graders have done best. TAG holds about one graded copy in six and CGC nearly one in ten, more than SGC.

Allen & Ginter and Duke tobacco cards: this is the real outlier. SGC holds close to half of the graded Allen & Ginter copies and nearly four in ten of the Duke. For these cards, PSA and SGC are close to equals.

We cannot say for certain why each market settled where it did, and we would not pretend to. But two things stand out: SGC's share is largest on the oldest cards, the tobacco issues, and the newer companies have done best on Batman. KSA, which also appears in small numbers, is a Canadian grader.

What the holder costs

To compare prices fairly, we took cases where the same card, from the same set, at the same numeric grade with no qualifier, was on offer or sold at least twice in a PSA holder and at least twice in another company's. Then we compared the median prices.

SGC, on offer: across fourteen matched pairs, an SGC copy asked about four-fifths of the PSA copy at the same grade.

SGC, sold: across seventeen matched pairs of recorded sales, an SGC copy sold for about two-thirds of the PSA copy.

That gap between the two is worth noticing. Sellers of SGC copies price them at a modest discount to PSA. Buyers, when they actually pay, take a bigger one.

Beckett and CGC: too few matched pairs to measure properly. For what it is worth, the handful of sales we could match came in well below half of PSA, while their asking prices were close to PSA's. If that holds as more sales come in, it is an even wider gap between what sellers hope for and what buyers pay.

The range around the SGC figure is wide. Some SGC copies of Batman card 1 asked as much as the PSA copies, and in one case far more. Some SGC 9s of the Wonder Bread Star Wars cards asked barely half. The four-fifths and two-thirds figures are the middle of a spread, not a rule.

The same answer as the sports cards

Our sister site ran the same comparison on early sports rookie cards and found an SGC copy asking about four-fifths of the PSA copy at the same grade, almost exactly what we see here. We set that out in a 9 is not a 9. Two different markets, Mickey Mantle and Darth Vader, put roughly the same price on the PSA label.

What to take from it

Price a non-PSA copy by ratio, not by grade. An SGC 7 is not a PSA 7 at the till. Start from about two-thirds of what the PSA copy sells for, and adjust for the card in front of you.

Trust sales over asks. Asking prices for SGC, Beckett and CGC copies run closer to PSA than sale prices do. If a seller quotes PSA money for another company's holder, the sales history usually says otherwise.

On tobacco cards, SGC is normal. With close to half the graded Allen & Ginter cards in SGC holders, an SGC tobacco card is not a second-best choice. It is half the market.

Expect to take the discount back when you sell. Buying in a cheaper holder saves money now and costs it later, unless the card is regraded.

Check any holder's certificate. Most graders offer an online certificate lookup. Use it, especially for the smaller companies, whose holders are less familiar to most buyers.

The thing worth sitting with

Every grading company is looking at the same piece of cardboard. A Darth Vader card does not change when it moves from one holder to another. Its price does, by about a third.

That third is the market's price for familiarity: the label most buyers know, on the card most buyers want. On the oldest cards here, the tobacco issues, half the market already lives in the other holder.

This index tracks every grader and grade separately, which is what makes a comparison like this possible. You can browse every set we cover and read how we work the numbers out.

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