PSA Grading Lawsuit: What Card Creators Need to Know

A PSA grade can turn cardboard into rent money. It can also turn an opening video into a month of content: submission, reveal, resale, repeat.

Now a proposed class action is questioning the trust underneath that entire loop. Not proving anything. Questioning it - loudly.

Inside the complaint

Baltimore collector Nicholas Funk filed a 188-page federal complaint¹ on July 28 against Professional Sports Authenticator and parent company Collectors Holdings.

The lawsuit claims PSA presents grading as consistent, expert and independent while allegedly using subjective judgments, shifting standards and production targets. It also attacks PSA's pricing, turnaround estimates, population reports and the possibility of conflicts created by Collectors owning businesses connected to card pricing, storage, resale and lending.

Those are allegations. PSA hadn't responded in court to this complaint as of August 6, and no class has been certified. Nobody has won anything. The internet may skip that boring bit. You shouldn't.

The plaintiff submitted cards through an intermediary, a detail that matters because PSA's current terms generally require direct customers to accept arbitration and waive class-action proceedings.

The scale explains why this isn't niche courtroom drama. PSA says it graded more than 19 million cards in 2025, up from two million in 2020. Independent tracking put its 2025 market share near 72%, with CGC a distant second.

Demand has been messy, too. In May, PSA reported a backlog nearing 10 million cards and paused four lower-priced grading tiers². Days earlier, it announced a $200 million expansion plan.

When one number controls the thumbnail, sale price and audience reaction, "just trust the slab" isn't a content strategy. It's borrowed credibility.

Your content sits on this trust

For card creators, grading isn't merely a service. It's a story engine. Gem-mint reveals deliver suspense. Population counts create scarcity. Price differences provide the payoff.

If viewers become more skeptical, reveal videos won't disappear. But lazy ones may. Saying a card "gained $3,000" because it received a 10 ignores fees, waiting time, selling costs and the uncomfortable fact that another grader - or another PSA review - may disagree.

Creator reactions are already split. Some collectors see familiar complaints about inconsistent regrades and conflicts. Others think the lawsuit stretches ordinary human judgment into accusations it may struggle to prove. That tension is useful content, provided you don't dress allegations up as a verdict.

Do this now

Archive raw-card photos, submission dates, invoices, declared values and certification numbers. If your business depends on grading reveals, your records are part of the production workflow now.

Show the full math on resale content. Include grading, shipping, insurance, platform fees and time locked up. Profit screenshots without costs are theatre. Fun theatre, perhaps. Still theatre.

Test alternatives such as CGC or TAG where the economics make sense, but don't pretend another logo removes subjectivity. Compare turnaround, resale demand and grading detail on camera.

And disclose PSA, dealer, marketplace or affiliate relationships clearly. Trust takes years to build. One suspicious slab can crack it surprisingly fast.