Baseball card market -- and grading -- riding a high

TAMPA, Fla. — Andy Broome's glasses press close to the magnifying loupe in his right hand. Squinting through its small lens, he inspects a 1909-11 T206 Dan Moeller baseball card. Part of card collecting's most iconic pre-war set, the card is more than a century old. Broome needs just a few seconds to certify its authenticity. "I knew as soon as it came out of the box," Broome said. "Handling as many cards as we do and doing it for a length of time, you develop a second sense." Broome, 49, turns the card perpendicular as his lamp's white LED bulb washes out the vintage card's colors. From his inspection, he spots glue residue. It's a flaw that, to the untrained eye, is indistinguishable. To a professional grader, it's detrimental to the card's score. Broome grades the card a 2 (or Good) on the 10-point scale — a mark that may seem low but is typical for a T206. Card grading underpins a booming collectibles industry, and the world's fastest-growing card-grading service, Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), is headquartered in Sarasota. Part of Certified Collectibles Group, CGC processes millions of sports, non-sports and trading cards such as Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. Graders authenticate and assess each card's condition. "We are the independent third-party expert in all of this. One of the reasons why grading exists at all is there was a time when, as technology increased, cards were being bought and sold sight unseen," Broome said. "We are that voice of expertise that both sides of the market depend on: buyers and sellers." Broome, CGC's vice president of sports card grading, feels a personal duty when he sits at his grading desk. The Bradenton resident first fell in love with collectibles when his father bought a pack of 1983 Topps baseball cards. At age 13, his grandfather took him to a trade day — a meetup for collectors — in Alabama. Broome stumbled across what he describes as "a proverbial shoebox of treasure." Inside was a 1938 Goudey baseball set housing Hall of Famers Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx and Bob Feller. "But something wasn't right with them," he remembered. "As I examined them closer and tried to figure out what the deal is with them, I noticed where each had a mark on the back where something had been removed." The word "reprint" had been stripped. Broome had been duped. That moment sparked a 27-year career in professional card grading. Carrying his childhood love for pre-war cards — those dating before the 1940s and as far back as the 1880s — he is a leading expert. The veteran grader has navigated a volatile collectibles market for years but says the industry's recent explosion has been unstoppable. "A perfect storm started building: 2020 hit, the Jordan documentary ("The Last Dance") came out, people were at home, they had some extra money in their pocket," Broome said. "Since COVID, (we) really haven't hit the downturn. Things just continue to increase." In June, CGC set a company record by grading 763,000 cards, according to GemRate. Fellow grading services Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), Beckett Grading Services and Technical Authentication & Grading (TAG) also reached monthly peaks, grading 2.5 million, 146,000 and 54,000 cards, respectively. Across the industry, card grading volume hit a record 3.5 million cards in June, a staggering 65% year-over-year increase. To manage demand, PSA, the industry leader, announced May 28 it would pause four service tiers. As of June 30, its grading backlog stood at 12 million submissions. Max Spiegel, president of Certified Collectibles Group — the parent company of CGC — is joining the trend. Introduced to collecting through coins at age 5, Spiegel, 37, says he now acquires more sports cards than any other collectible. His personal collection's growth reflects a rapidly scaling Sarasota-based operation. "This year, we're probably going to grade 7 million cards between sports cards and trading card games," Spiegel said. "It's been a bit of a challenge trying to scale the business while maintaining our quality, which obviously is critical." Certified Collectibles Group is building a global grading network, with teams in the United States, London, Munich, Dubai, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Broome compares the operation to a professional sports team — only as strong as its weakest player. Training modules and monitoring form the playbook. New CGC graders start with ultra-modern cards, 2020 and newer, which make up most submissions. Card in hand, they authenticate and assign a grade on a 10-point scale based on four key areas: centering, corners, edges and surface. With repetition, graders refine their practice and develop niches. Broome has a grader who specializes in 1990s basketball insert cards, another who focuses on 1920s international and a third with modern hockey expertise. "The ideal state is you have an entire team of all specialties," Broome said. "Everybody's got their niche, and when you put all that together in a team setting, you're unstoppable." CGC service tiers vary by turnaround time, cost and card value. Bulk submissions start at $17 per card with a 25-card minimum and have a return time of about four months. Other premium tiers start at $300 per card with a return time as fast as two days. Each CGC-graded card is encapsulated in a protective holder with a label displaying its grade and a QR code linking to its page in the company's growing database of 14 million cards. But being a player in the grading process — especially on the Sarasota team that grades about 35,000 cards a day — takes a unique person. "If you're not passionate about cards, you will hate this job. It'll absolutely drive you insane. It's monotonous. Eight-plus hours, I'm sitting under a lamp looking at someone else's cards. I have to be on my game. I can't slack off. I can't daydream," Broome said. "But if you have that passion, I can't imagine doing anything else." "I definitely have the bug or whatever, you know, genetic defect causes you to be an active collector," Spiegel said. Trading card fanaticism continues to infect the mainstream media, and the market shows no signs of slowing down. Broome and Spiegel, once self-described "nerds," now act as arbiters of authenticity. While handling rare cards that may go on to fetch millions — like a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card CGC graded, which sold in 2022 for $1.25 million — Broome remains a collector at heart. "It's just another day playing with somebody else's baseball cards," Broome jokes. "I can't imagine doing anything else."