PSA Submission Tiers — Pricing and Turnaround Compared
A submission tier is the service level a card owner selects when sending cards to PSA, BGS, or CGC. Tiers are priced by declared card value and corresponding turnaround time, ranging from Bulk (lowest-value cards, longest wait) to Walkthrough (highest-value, fastest service). PSA's published 2026 tiers run from Bulk at roughly $15 per card to Walkthrough at $300+ per card.
Detailed explanation
PSA prices grading by declared value because higher-value cards carry higher liability if lost or damaged. The tier you select must match the card's market value — under-declaring is a violation of submission terms and can void grading guarantees. Roughly, PSA's 2026 ladder is: Bulk ($15/card, 65+ business day wait, value ceiling $499); Value ($25/card, 45-day, $499 ceiling); Regular ($75/card, 20-day, $1,499 ceiling); Express ($150/card, 10-day, $2,499 ceiling); Super Express ($300/card, 5-day, $4,999 ceiling); Walkthrough ($600+/card, 1-2 day, no ceiling). BGS and CGC publish parallel ladders with slightly different price points.
The submission-tier decision compounds for collectors with multiple cards: 100 modern cards at Bulk = $1,500 in grading fees plus shipping and insurance. The same 100 cards at Express = $15,000. The math forces a pre-screen step — most collectors won't submit a card unless the post-grade resale value exceeds the grading fee by 3x or more.
Common misconception: faster tiers grade more strictly. They do not — PSA's published rubric is the same across all tiers. What changes is queue position and insurance ceiling.
How AuraGrade measures it
AuraGrade's $0.99 pre-screen lets a collector decide which cards to submit and at which tier — paying about a dollar to avoid spending $25 on a card likely to grade PSA 7.
Worked example
A collector has 50 raw Pokémon cards ranging from likely PSA 6 to PSA 10. Submitting all 50 at PSA Bulk costs $750. After grading, only 12 cards come back PSA 9+ and worth resale. A pre-screen at $0.99 each would have cost $50 total, surfaced the likely PSA 6-8 cards, and saved roughly $570 in grading fees.