More than 20 years after it first began grading cards, Beckett has expanded its global footprint with the launch of its first international grading center in Germany on Tuesday.
Beckett will immediately begin accepting submissions to the new center with its “full stack of services.” Beckett had previously offered grading to international collectors through partnered submission centers that would ship the cards to Beckett’s headquarters in Plano, Texas.
Those submission centers will now send cards to the new location in northwest Germany. Initial pricing is expected to be about 20 euros per card for the Base service level and about 36 euros for Standard.
“It seemed like the right way for us to continue to position ourselves to grow, purely from a Beckett standpoint,” Beckett chief marketing officer Scott Stroud told cllct. “What’s nice, though, is we already operate globally — one of our three businesses, Dragon Shield, is in Denmark. We know how to operate in Europe.
"We’ve done this for a while because a pretty significant chunk of our revenue as a company is there … so it wasn’t probably as complicated or scary for us, just because one of our businesses is already anchored in an EU country.”
According to Stroud, a location in the United Kingdom was also considered, though Germany made more sense for a number of reasons. In addition to being close to Dragon Shield — Beckett’s new parent company, Collēctīvus Holdings, is made up of Beckett, Dragon Shield and Southern Hobby Distribution — the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union in 2020 offered “additional complexities.”
Beckett also had relationships with a number of experienced graders in the region after offering services during last year’s MagicCon Amsterdam. Beckett began exploring a European grading center more last April, and a positive experience at MagicCon kicked the goal “into overdrive.”
The fact Europe has become a stronger market for Trading Card Game collectors has played a part, too. According to third-party grading tracker GemRate, Beckett graded approximately 329,000 non-sports and TCG cards in 2024, which slightly outpaced the 327,000 graded sports cards.
Considered to have better quality control than sports cards in some cases, TCG categories such as Pokémon, One Piece and Dragon Ball have been popular among Beckett submitters with the goal of securing the highly coveted BGS 10 Black Label.
Long considered one of the most important companies in the trading card hobby, Beckett’s reputation has waned in recent years. Best known for its series of Beckett price guides, many collectors have shifted to digital resources for that data in recent years.
Beckett’s position among major card grading companies has also been shuffled. Once considered possibly the best card grading company in the industry, Beckett finished fourth in total volume among the major four authentications in 2024, according to GemRate.
The company hopes to reshape its public perception, however, with the new international grading center the latest in what the company believes are a series of positive moves.
Just days after announcing a reorganization with Beckett, Dragon Shield and Southern Hobby positioned under Collēctīvus in December, the company announced an additional $250 million in financing from a group led by King Street Capital Management.
Earlier this month, Beckett announced it had signed its authentication team to long-term contract extensions. Considered one of the company’s strongest core services, the authentication team attended more than 125 events and certified more than 2 million items in 2024.
“I think what you’re seeing is that we recognize that we need to show continued progress and evolution, and these steps you’ve seen — financing, authentication, expanding into Europe — I think we believe are a series of steps in the right direction to continue to build Beckett back to where it should be, which is one of the premier names in the industry,” Stroud said.
“We like the momentum we have, and I think this is just another step in what will be continued progress in 2025 and beyond.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.