PSA’s grading backlog is still enormous.

As of August 25, 2026, Professional Sports Authenticator says its active backlog stands at 10.9 million cards. While that’s a significant improvement from the company’s peak of approximately 14 million cards in June, it remains more than double the level PSA says it needs to reach before reopening its cheaper grading tiers.

And now collectors are being asked to wait even longer.

According to a report from Baseball America, PSA has increased the estimated turnaround time for its $80 grading service from 30–40 business days to 70–80 business days. That’s roughly four months of business days before considering weekends, holidays, shipping, or the time it may take PSA to actually receive and enter a submission into its system.

That isn’t a minor adjustment.

It’s a major problem.

The Backlog Is Still Massive

PSA’s backlog has been on a roller coaster throughout the summer.

The company reported:

Date	Backlog
May 28	10 million
June 2	14 million
June 30	12 million
July 14	11 million
July 28	12.4 million
August 11	11.85 million
August 25	10.9 million

PSA has previously stated that it wants to reduce the backlog to 5 million cards before reopening the Value service tiers that were suspended earlier this year.

So while 10.9 million is considerably better than 14 million, collectors shouldn’t mistake “improving” for “fixed.”

PSA is still sitting on nearly 11 million cards.

The $80 Option Is Now a 70–80 Business Day Wait

The most concerning part of the latest announcement is what happened to the least expensive grading option currently available.

The $80 tier was previously estimated at 30–40 business days.

It is now 70–80 business days.

That’s an enormous increase.

For collectors who aren’t interested in spending $149, $349 or $599 to get their cards graded faster, there aren’t many alternatives.

PSA’s current service structure essentially creates a choice:

Pay more or wait months.

The company’s $149 Express service remains at its existing turnaround estimate, while Super Express and Walk-Through have also seen their turnaround windows increase.

PSA Isn’t Entirely to Blame

Here’s where collectors need to take some responsibility.

PSA has created a huge grading operation, but collectors have also created an enormous demand for grading.

Over the past several years, the hobby has developed an obsession with putting virtually everything into a slab.

Modern base cards.

Low-dollar inserts.

Mass-produced parallels.

Cards worth less than the cost of grading them.

There are plenty of cards being submitted where the question shouldn’t be “What grade will this get?”

It should be:

“Why am I grading this?”

If a card is worth $10 raw and costs $20–$30 to grade, there’s probably a pretty good argument for leaving it raw.

Multiply that decision by millions of cards and the problem becomes much easier to understand.

PSA itself said in May that a surge in submissions added another 1.6 million cards to its backlog in a matter of weeks. The company said submissions jumped 20% following earlier turnaround-time changes.

So no, this isn’t entirely PSA’s fault.

Collectors have been feeding the machine.

But PSA Still Has to Own Its Part of the Problem

That doesn’t let PSA off the hook.

PSA has spent years aggressively expanding its business and encouraging collectors to grade cards.

The company says its grading capacity has increased approximately fivefold since 2021, and it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into infrastructure, technology and personnel.

Despite that investment, demand continues to overwhelm capacity.

At some point, the world’s largest grading company needs to be able to provide a service that resembles what customers were actually sold.

A turnaround time isn’t supposed to be a vague suggestion.

And when a $80 service suddenly goes from 30–40 business days to 70–80, collectors have every right to be frustrated.

PSA’s $200 Million Investment Hasn’t Solved the Problem Yet

PSA has announced a $200 million infrastructure investment, including new facilities, technology and additional employees.

The company has also opened its fifth grading facility in Plano, Texas.

That’s encouraging.

But collectors ultimately care about results.

They don’t care how much money PSA says it is investing if their cards are sitting in a warehouse for months.

The latest numbers show that PSA is making progress, but the company still has a long way to go.

The Hobby Has a Grading Problem

This situation is bigger than PSA.

The hobby has become increasingly dependent on graded cards.

A PSA 10 can sell for dramatically more than the same card raw. That creates a powerful incentive to submit cards for grading, even when the economics don’t make much sense.

And once everyone starts doing it, the grading companies get buried.

The result is the situation we’re looking at today:

Millions upon millions of cards waiting to be graded.

And collectors are paying the price.

This Is Also Why Alternatives Matter

The PSA brand still carries enormous weight in the sports card market. For collectors concerned primarily with resale value, PSA remains difficult to ignore.

But the current situation is a good reminder that collectors shouldn’t assume PSA is the only option.

Companies such as CGC offer another grading choice, and competition is good for the hobby.

If another company can provide competitive grading standards, reasonable pricing and significantly better turnaround times, collectors should be willing to consider it.

The more alternatives collectors have, the less dependent the hobby becomes on a single grading company.

What Should Collectors Do?

For the average collector, the answer isn’t necessarily to stop grading.

It’s to be more selective.

Before submitting a card, ask:

Is the card valuable enough to justify grading?
Am I grading it for protection or resale?
Does the expected increase in value justify the grading cost?
Do I actually care what grade it receives?
Is PSA the best grading company for this particular card?

If the answer to those questions is no, maybe the card belongs in a sleeve and toploader rather than a slab.

Not every card needs to be graded.

Final Thoughts

PSA’s backlog falling from 14 million to 10.9 million is good news.

But 10.9 million cards is still an absurdly large backlog.

And doubling the estimated turnaround time for the $80 tier to 70–80 business days is not something collectors should celebrate.

There is plenty of blame to go around.

Collectors have flooded the grading industry with cards that probably never needed to be graded in the first place. PSA, meanwhile, has built an enormous business around that demand and now has to prove that its infrastructure can actually handle it.

The grading boom created a monster.

Now everyone has to deal with it.

For collectors, the lesson is simple:

Stop grading everything.

Be selective about what deserves a slab, consider alternatives to PSA, and don’t assume that paying for grading automatically creates value.

Because right now, the most valuable thing PSA can give collectors might simply be their cards back.