PSA has reached a number of significant milestones since its inception in 1991. Over the past 28 years, we have certified more than 34 million different trading cards, autographs and sports collectibles. On March 22, 2018, we announced that we reached 30 million collectibles certified with the submission of a 2000 Playoff Contenders #144 Tom Brady autographed rookie card. But because this hobby is not built on sports alone, we’ve also seen an impressive lineup of non-sports cards that have been submitted for authentication and grading. Toward that end, we are happy to announce that we are closing in on yet another historic milestone: the certification of PSA’s 1 millionth graded Pokémon card!
Based on submission calculations, the historic Pokémon card will likely pass through the PSA grading room next week. With that upcoming reveal, PSA is launching a special social media campaign over the next few days seeking responses to the question: “Guess which Pokémon will be on the 1 millionth PSA graded Pokémon card?”
Up until the announcement is made next week (likely Tuesday), participating Pokémon trainers can provide their guesses via @PSAcard on Instagram, the main social media platform the giveaway will run through. The contest rules are simple:
- Tell us which Pokémon you think will be on the 1,000,000th PSA-graded Pokémon card;
- Must enter before Tuesday, October 29; and
- Participants must be 18 years of age or older, a U.S. resident, and no purchase is necessary.
We’ll randomly draw TWO winners to take home a PSA grab bag of merchandise, including a PSA “Gotta Grade ‘Em All” bag, breaker mat, and hat. Winners will be announced shortly thereafter.
The Growing Popularity of Pokémon, As Seen in PSA Submissions
The highly successful trading card game (TCG) debuted in 1999 and has cultivated an incredible following of Pokémon devotees ever since. After its release, some of the cards started trickling into PSA for authentication, grading and encapsulating. In mid-1999, for instance, we received our first submission of 11 Pokémon cards. That number grew slowly over the next several years, but in 2008, PSA received 757 Pokémon card submissions, which was followed by 1,060 submissions in 2009 and 1,842 submissions in 2010. In 2013, however, those numbers picked up dramatically with 18,874 Pokémon submissions. Note: Not every card submitted passed authentication, but a significant number of them did. Those numbers have continued to grow from tens of thousands of Pokémon card submissions every year to hundreds of thousands most recently.
“We’ve seen a phenomenal rise in the number of Pokémon cards being submitted to us each year and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Pokémon collecting community for putting their trust in us,” said PSA President Steve Sloan.
