This site's argument has always been that a grade is only worth what the market trusts in the company issuing it. These three suits attack that trust from three different directions rather than repeating one claim. Rasmussen says consolidation itself lets Collectors raise prices and slow service without competitive discipline — and the amended complaint puts numbers on it: SGC's cheapest tier from $15 to $18, its monthly volume cut from roughly 150,000 to 50,000 cards. Those are checkable operational claims, not opinion, and worth verifying independently if they surface in an actual filing rather than a summary of one. Funk's suit goes after the grading itself, down to a specific certification number on a T206 Honus Wagner. Lichtman's is different in kind: not a service complaint but a conflict-of-interest claim, that grades can be steered to protect cards held by Collectors' own CEO. None of this has been proven, and Collectors has pushed back specifically on Lichtman's version. But together they are the first sustained legal challenge to the "grade is an expert opinion" framing PSA uses publicly, arriving while Collectors controls PSA, SGC and Beckett, a combination Rep. Pat Ryan warned the FTC would hold more than 80% of grading volume.
Correction, 15 October 2026: an earlier version said Collectors controls roughly 80% of grading volume, as if that were a measured share. The figure is Rep. Pat Ryan's warning to the FTC about the combined company, and the text now says so.
