Collecting 101
Beckett making grading progress after purchase by Collectors, return to its roots
When Colin Hudson took over the reins as the general manager of Beckett Grading Services last December, he heard all the chatter loud and clear.
One of the most respected third-party grading and authentication companies in the hobby had seen its submissions drop month after month. Collectors—the parent company of grading and authentication giant PSA and SGC—swooped in and bought one of its main competitors, Beckett. Many in the hobby thought the writing was on the wall.
“There were a lot of people that were kind of detracting and they were spelling, ‘Oh, this is the end of Beckett and look what they did with comics,’” Hudson told SCD. “I think there was this kind of doomsday scenario. But it’s really been, no, let’s free up the resources so we can focus on growing the brand, not sidelining it or shrinking it by any means.”
Collectors CEO Nat Turner and Collectors and PSA President Ryan Hoge tapped Hudson to lead Beckett’s revitalization, and he’s risen to the challenge.
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In the first six months since the Beckett sale, Hudson focused on improving all areas of the business.
“It’s really a function of looking at the card grading business, autograph authentication, Manga, the online price guide and magazine and really trying to develop a strategy for each of those,” Hudson said. “The card market is in a place where there is just so much more demand than supply, so that’s really been the core focus.”
The Beckett name has been synonymous with the hobby since Dr. James Beckett started the company in 1984. Fifteen years later, Beckett Grading Service (BGS) was launched. It’s main competitor at the time was Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), which had started eight years earlier.
Back in the mid-2000s to early 2010s, BGS and PSA were going neck-and-neck with the number of grading submissions. However, in the last few years, Beckett slipped to No. 4.
According to GemRate, which tracks grading totals, Beckett graded 842,000 cards in 2025. PSA ended the year grading 19.26 million cards, followed by CGC at 4.92 million and SGC at 1.42 million.
When they purchased Beckett, the brass at Collectors made it their mission to restore Beckett to its glory days.
“Our original plan, which I think is still the same, is we wanted to make Beckett great again,” Turner told SCD. “Beckett has a very powerful brand, very nostalgic to me personally and I think to pretty much every sports card collector from the ’80s and ’90s. In my opinion, they kind of lost their way in the middle 2000s with kind of lack of investment perhaps and didn’t really keep up with the industry as far as technology and a bunch of different stuff. Obviously, the numbers speak for themselves. They kind of got outcompeted by more than a number of companies. But the brand has still remained awesome.”
In early 2026, Beckett was grading roughly 4,000 cards on a daily basis. Hudson came in and sought to significantly increase those numbers.
“I challenged the team, OK, let’s develop a plan that by the end of the year we’re doing 10,000 units a day. So, basically, more than doubling output,” Hudson said in early June. “We’re well on our way to that goal. We’re doing roughly 7,000 units a day.”
In the month of May alone, Beckett hit 145,000 graded items, a 49% month-over-month increase.
“We’ve been able to make a ton of progress in just increasing grading capacity and that’s been through a function of we’ve opened and hired almost 100 new roles across the operation,” Hudson said. “We’ve hired graders and we’re starting to look at every single process in the grading operation, understand the data, see where we can make tweaks such that we can get more throughput, more productivity from each stage of the grading process. We’ve made a ton of strides so far, and there’s a lot more that we can do.”
Hoge has been impressed with how Hudson and his staff have made the Beckett brand shine in the few short months since it was acquired.
“The plan from day one was straightforward: respect what made Beckett great, invest in the team and earn back the confidence of customers who’ve trusted the brand for decades,” Hoge told SCD. “I couldn’t be prouder of how the team is executing. Submission volumes are scaling, operations are tightening across the board and the response from collectors has been genuinely encouraging. We’re just getting started, and The National is going to be a great showcase for what’s ahead.”
THE BECKETT BRAND
It’s been Hudson’s goal to utilize the Beckett brand name, which has played a big role in the grading space for almost three decades.
“I think it’s a function of respecting the brand, the identity of the brand, people’s association with it, people’s history with the magazine and the price guide in particular,” said Hudson, who shifted to Beckett after three and a half years as Collectors’ director of strategy and corporate development. “We don’t want to exclusively be stuck and tied to the way that we’ve been doing things just because that’s what the legacy is. But I do think there is a way to bridge that gap.
“For example, with the magazines, are people at shows exclusively using a physical print copy of something to look up pricing? No, not really in 2026. But print itself is in the growing media. I do think that this hobby lends itself to a physical medium like that where we’re looking at plastic and cardboard at the root of the offering. So, a magazine where you can just decompress, take a break from the screens and read about the hobby. I think that’s something we’re exploring.”
In May, Beckett returned to its heritage by launching a new brand and new label. The company brought back its recognizable and iconic “B with laurels” crest.
Beckett also unveiled a sharp, refined grading label. According to Beckett, the new label provides maximum clarity and usability through a larger final grade and improved spacing with unified subgrades and autograph details.
Mixing in the old logo with a new label has been resonating well with collectors.
“There seems to be this nice feedback loop where the better we get growing our capacity, the more Beckett slabs that are on the market, the more that kind of demonstrates that there’s value in the slabs, which in turn drives more trust and more submissions,” Hudson said. “I’m just really excited to see the progress so far and I think launching the new branding in the last month has just kind of added to that. It’s been exciting.”
Hudson noted it has required a lot of upfront work to gather data to start seeing which areas of the company need to focus.
Beckett has spent the last year and a half entirely revamping its website; the new site was slated to launch at the end of June. That includes enhancements to areas such as the population report, making it more user friendly. The company is also launching a new app and app experience in July.
“The new web experience will also include a vault functionality such that you can send Beckett orders to the PSA vault and unlock instant offers and eventually sell on eBay—basically, all the functionality once you’re within the PSA vault,” Hudson said.
“We’re basically looking at what is the PSA experience and what can we replicate within the Beckett ecosystem. I think there’s a lot more that we can implement once we’re able to essentially get on some of the same backend infrastructure and software. It’s a lot more challenging than it sounds on the surface. So, we’re cautiously optimistic that’s something we can maybe roll out end of the year, maybe it slips into 2027. All that said, this is just tons of investment in the brand.”
Beckett is making changes for the good without disrupting the reasons why the company became a favorite of collectors decades ago.
“People always ask, ‘Are you guys going to get rid of subgrades or the inner sleeve?’ I think it’s really important for us—kind of going back to the question of what’s the vision for Beckett—what’s really important for us is leaning into what’s our differentiator,” Hudson said. “That black label chase, the value of the black label, the subgrades, the inner sleeves, these are things only Beckett is really offering at scale. So, it makes sense for us to continue having those points of differentiation. Then kind of continuing to see, what else could we do to be different. The last thing I want to do is just be like interchangeable with PSA, where it becomes just a commodity and now it’s a red label vs. a gold label. We truly need to have a differentiation in the product that we’re offering, in my opinion.”
Turner seconded the fact that Beckett’s subgrades aren’t going anywhere. He still remembers the first card he ever graded was with BGS in 1999; he can also recall the subgrades he received for his prized Steve Francis card.
“We’re going to stay true to the subgrades. I’ve always liked the Beckett subgrades,” Turner said. “I don’t think it’s the right thing to do for PSA, so you’re not going to see any sort of cross pollination on that front.”
FRIENDLY COMPETITION
Even though Beckett is under the same umbrella as PSA, the company still runs independently when it comes to everyday operations, its grading process, how it handles card shows and more.
Hudson said it utilizes the other Collectors brands in certain situations such as sharing security at an event.
“To me, it’s the best of both worlds where we have the autonomy to pursue what we think is right for Beckett and there’s always notes that we can compare,” Hudson said. “I don’t feel pressured in any way to like, OK, here’s the way that you have to do things. It’s really thinking through the lens of what’s best for the customer, what’s best for the hobby and then execute.”
Prior to being on the same team, competition between PSA and Beckett for supremacy was real. Is there still friction between the two companies or have they learned to co-exist under the same ownership group?
“To be honest, we’re still trying to figure it out,” Hudson said. “There is a unique tension and while we play on the same team and we’re the same family, the analogy you always use is, you still fight with your brothers and sisters. Now, the way that you fight with your brothers and sisters is different than if you’re in a street fight. There’s no stabbing, there’s no fingers in the eye. But it’s working together where it makes sense. So, if there are bad actors or sketchy cards, we have open threads with SGC and PSA where we can collaborate.
“Now, we’re still competing, right? So, when I think about my pricing for The National or the Dallas Card Show or my marketing, at the end of the day, I want to get as many customers and as many cards as possible into the Beckett brand. Whether that’s trying to convert PSA customers or just nurture existing Beckett customers, I’m not shying away from trying to convert PSA customers, if I know they are trying to convert Beckett customers. I think that’s that natural tension where it’s like, we’re going to work together where it makes sense defensively, but we’re also going to compete offensively.”
Hudson is looking forward to the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago, where Beckett will be able to show off its advancements as a company. Beckett will offer on-site grading ($125 for each card to be completed by the end of the show; $115 each for five or more cards), graded card review, raw card review, and it will take submissions back to its Dallas facility.
For the first time in quite a while, Beckett is taking monumental steps in the right direction. It’s showing collectors it is a company that is getting back to its roots and is here to stay.
“I’m excited about what’s to come,” Hudson said.
