New York Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) is urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate trading card company Collectors for potential monopolistic practices amid its acquisition of rival Beckett.
According to a press release, Ryan argues Collectors, which now owns three of the four major trading card grading companies, should be probed after consolidating the industry.
Collectors, which also owns grading giant PSA, acquired rival SGC in early 2024 and reached a deal to acquire competitor Beckett on Monday. CGC Cards is now the lone independent operator among the four largest grading companies.
Collectors CEO Nat Turner said Beckett is expected to operate independently from PSA and SGC as its own brand.
“Even my 4- and 6-year-old boys, who just started their collections, know this behavior is wrong,” Ryan said in a statement. “Attempts to corner the trading card market are not only deeply unpopular, they are unethical. Kids, collectors and local card stores shouldn’t have to worry that the system is stacked against them, and the FTC needs to step in before this hobby is controlled by one powerful company.”
In his letter to FTC Chair Andrew N. Ferguson, Ryan argues Collectors’ dominance is “compounded by vertical integration” as it “controls grading capacity, pricing analytics through Card Ladder, and participates in buying and selling graded cards — creating severe conflicts of interest.”
Ryan writes the FTC should investigate whether Collectors’ actions were done to eliminate competition, whether the “roll-up strategy” violates Section 5 of the FTC Act and whether Beckett parent company Collēctīvus Holdings functioned as a pass-through entity to evade merger scrutiny.
Other questions posed by Ryan include whether the move to scale down SGC’s operations was “contrary to representation made at the time of the merger,” how the consolidation of the industry impacts consumers, what safeguards are in place preventing Collectors from coordinating behavior across three independent brands, what barriers now prevent new competitors from entering the category and how vertical integration creates opportunities for market manipulation.
“By systematically acquiring its primary competitors, Collectors has effectively dismantled market competition,” Ryan wrote in the letter to the FTC. “If its purchase of Beckett goes through, Collectors will control over 80% of the industry’s volume. This consolidation, paired with deep vertical integration, threatens the objectivity of the multi-billion-dollar collectibles market, suppresses labor mobility for professional graders, and leaves consumers and small businesses with virtually no alternative for essential authentication services.
PSA could not be reached when cllct requested comment on Ryan’s letter to the FTC.
Following the acquisition of Beckett, Collectors brands have accounted for roughly 79% of the grading market so far in 2025, according to third-party tracker GemRate. In total, PSA has graded roughly 18 million cards in 2025, while SGC has graded 1.4 million and BGS has graded about 790,000.
Competitor CGC Cards has graded roughly 3.8 million cards so far in 2025.
Collectors acquired rival grader SGC in February 2024 and has since scaled the company down toward what PSA president Ryan Hoge called a "boutique" brand earlier this year. According to GemRate, SGC graded roughly 36,000 cards in November, marking the company’s lowest total since GemRate began tracking data in 2022.
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Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the collectibles editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.