Pokémon Card Grading Company Valued at $500 Million After Blackstone Acquisition

The private equity firm that is buying and renting homes en masse all over the country has also just bought one of the most popular Pokémon card grading companies. 

Blackstone Group Inc. has bought a majority stake in Certified Collectibles Group (CCG), a decades-old memorabilia authenticating and grading company that in recent months has been overwhelmed with a mass influx of Pokémon card grading submissions caused by a white hot market during the pandemic. The deal valued the grading company at more than $500 million.

“We had always thought that we would never sell this incredible company, but when we were approached by Blackstone, we quickly realized that we shared the same vision for a larger, more vibrant and more trusted collectibles market,” Mark Salzberg and Steven Eichenbaum, the founder and CEO of CCG respectively, wrote in a letter to customers . “We also knew that Blackstone's enormous resources, expertise and experience would help propel CCG and the markets that we serve to new heights. With Blackstone's support, we will accelerate our growth by hiring and training more graders, expanding our facilities, serving new markets, developing our digital offerings and much more. These efforts will benefit our customers, employees, company and industry.”

For months, CCG and its collectibles grading imprint CGC has been trying to explain why it cannot turn around Pokémon and Magic the Gathering card grades on a reasonable timeline. Thousands of collectors across the country have been flooding the grading companies CGC, PSA, and Beckett Grading Services with what a PSA executive called “an avalanche of cardboard” during the pandemic. Highly graded rare Pokémon cards can fetch thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on the secondary market. To be clear, CCG works in a variety of different collectibles markets. It authenticates coins, grades comic books, throws various industry events, and, about a year ago, started grading Pokémon, Magic the Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Pokémon cards are now one of the company's biggest markets.

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