SGC & CGC Card Grading for Canadian Collectors
By Nathan Wiebe, CPA — collector, and a buyer and seller of cards. Published September 23, 2026.
SGC and CGC are the two major US card graders besides PSA and Beckett — and, like Beckett, neither has a Canadian receiving centre, so a submission from Canada ships straight across the border either way. SGC built its name on vintage cards and was bought by Collectors, PSA's parent company, in 2024. CGC is the newest major entrant into card grading, with a published fee table running from $17 to $300+ USD per card depending on turnaround and declared value, plus membership discounts and a CrossOver service for cards already graded elsewhere.
PSA and Beckett get most of the attention, but SGC and CGC are both real, established alternatives — and, like Beckett, neither one has a Canadian receiving centre, so a submission from Canada crosses the border no matter which of the three you pick. This guide covers what actually makes SGC and CGC different from each other, and from PSA and Beckett. If you haven't already decided against PSA or Beckett specifically, our full grading comparison covers all four side by side, and our Beckett grading guide goes deep on Beckett's subgrade system specifically.
SGC: The Vintage Specialist, Now Owned by PSA's Parent Company
SGC opened in July 1998, based in Boca Raton, Florida, and built its reputation grading vintage cards — its black-bordered holder is a familiar sight to collectors who focus on pre-1980 cardboard. For its first two decades, SGC used a 1–100 grading scale rather than the 1–10 scale PSA, Beckett, and now SGC itself use; it switched to 1–10 in 2018 to make the scale easier for collectors to compare across graders. Despite the vintage reputation, SGC's own submissions have shifted toward modern cards by volume in recent years.
In February 2024, Collectors — the parent company of PSA — acquired SGC. SGC's president at the time of the deal, Peter Steinberg, said SGC would remain an independent brand with its existing management and grading team, rather than being merged into PSA's own grading operation. In practice, that means PSA's parent company now owns two of the industry's major graders while SGC continues to operate under its own name, standards, and holder — worth knowing if a card's grading history matters to how you value it.
CGC: The Newest Major Entrant, With Published Tiers
CGC Cards is the most recently established of the four major graders in trading cards. Its published fee schedule is more detailed than what most graders post, running across seven tiers by declared value and turnaround:
| Tier | Max declared value | Fee per card (USD) | Current turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bulk | $500 (25-card min.) | $17 | ~150 business days |
| Economy | $1,000 | $20 | ~90 business days |
| Standard | $3,000 | $55 | ~10 business days |
| Express | $10,000 | $100 | ~5 business days |
| WalkThrough | $100,000 | $300 | ~2 business days |
| Unlimited Value | Unlimited | $300 + 1% of value | ~2 business days |
As posted on CGC's own fee page as of 2026-09-23; turnaround times are estimates only and are explicitly not guaranteed by CGC. CGC members save 10% (Associate/Premium) or 20% (Elite) on grading — see cgccards.com for current membership terms.
CGC also runs a CrossOver service: send in a card already graded by PSA, Beckett, or SGC, and CGC will only remove it from its original holder and re-slab it under the CGC label if CGC's own assessment would grade it the same or higher — otherwise it comes back in its original holder and the fee still applies (a "Cross at Any Grade" option skips that protection if you want the CGC number regardless). That makes CGC a reasonable way to get a second opinion on a card you already own in another grader's slab, without committing to a downgrade you didn't ask for.
SGC or CGC — Which One?
Neither is a wrong choice, and neither carries PSA's resale-market recognition for modern star and rookie cards. SGC makes sense if vintage is your focus and you value its established following among vintage collectors — or if you already own SGC-graded cards and want a consistent look across a collection. CGC makes sense if you want its published fee transparency, its membership discounts on volume, or the CrossOver option for a card you want re-evaluated. Whichever you pick, the cross-border reality is the same: cards ship to the US, and only PSA currently shortens that trip for Canadians with its Mississauga receiving centre. Our full comparison guide also covers the Canadian-based graders — Overtime Grading, TGA, KSA, and HOF Grading — that skip the border question entirely, and our Beckett grading guide covers the fourth major US grader, including its subgrade system. If you're still deciding whether a specific card is worth grading at all, start with our card grading 101 guide.
CGC's fee table was checked directly against cgccards.com on 2026-09-23; SGC's history and 2024 acquisition were checked against Sports Collectors Digest's reporting the same day. Both graders' fees and processes change — confirm the current numbers on each grader's own site before you submit. If something here is out of date, let us know.