Beckett Reopened Base and Standard Grading Today. Beckett.com Is Still Offline.
Beckett promised a September 15 reopening of its Base and Standard tiers and delivered it through a temporary form, because its website and app have been down since September 9. Here is what the maintenance page actually says and whether you should submit.
Beckett said in August that its Base and Standard grading tiers would reopen on September 15. They did, but not the way anyone expected. As of this morning, Beckett.com and the Beckett mobile app are still offline for what the company calls "infrastructure enhancements," and the only way to start a new Base, Standard or Express order is a temporary submission form hosted on Jotform and linked from the maintenance page. If you have been waiting since the August 27 pause to send in a stack of cards, this is your window. It just looks nothing like a normal Beckett checkout.
How we got here
The timeline matters because there are two separate Beckett stories running at once. The first is the tier pause. Beckett stopped accepting online Base and Standard submissions in late August after reporting that total submissions were up 102 percent year over year and TCG submissions were up 159 percent. The stated plan was to clear the existing queue and reopen both tiers on September 15, with Express and Priority staying open in the meantime and show drop-offs continuing at events like Front Row Vegas, the Dallas Card Show and the LA Card Show.
The second story started at 7 p.m. Central on September 9, when Beckett took every one of its websites and its mobile app offline with no published restore date. That outage blocked all new online submissions, including the Express and Priority tiers that were supposed to be the fallback. Card Grading News re-checked the site on September 14 and found the same maintenance page still serving.
Today the maintenance page changed. It now carries a "Base and Standard Submissions Are Open" banner, a link to the temporary form, and an FAQ confirming that Base (with subgrades), Standard and Express are all available through it. The site and app remain down.
What Beckett is actually saying
The FAQ on the maintenance page is short, and it is worth reading closely because it is the only official word right now. In summary:
- Which tiers are open: Base with subgrades, Standard and Express, through the temporary form only. Beckett says availability "may change" depending on demand, backlog and its ability to hit turnaround estimates.
- Pricing and turnaround: Beckett says prices are unchanged and turnaround estimates are not being extended as part of the reopening. Turnarounds remain estimates in business days and are not guaranteed.
- Existing orders: Cards already received are not affected by the outage and continue to move through grading normally.
- The kill switch: If demand or backlog reaches a point where Beckett cannot consistently meet estimated turnaround times, it may pause new submissions again while it works through what it has.
That last point is the one to plan around. Beckett paused Base and Standard once already this summer when volume doubled. A reopening that routes through a form with no live order tracking is not a reopening built to absorb a rush.
Should you submit through a temporary form?
There is nothing inherently wrong with a Jotform intake. Plenty of graders ran on spreadsheets and email before they had web portals. But there are practical differences from a normal Beckett order that you should understand before you box anything up.
You will not have a dashboard
With the site and app offline, there is no order status page. Beckett says it will continue processing in-house submissions, but until the platforms come back you will be tracking your order by whatever confirmation the form sends you and whatever updates Beckett posts to the maintenance page. If you are the kind of submitter who refreshes a status page daily, this is going to be an uncomfortable few weeks.
Confirm the live page before you ship
The maintenance page has changed twice in six days. Check it the morning you plan to mail, not the day you fill out the form. If the "Submissions Are Open" banner is gone, do not ship on the assumption that it will come back while your package is in transit.
Show drop-offs still exist
Beckett has been staffing drop-off tables at major shows throughout the pause. If a show Beckett is attending falls in your calendar, an in-person handoff gets you a receipt and a human being to ask questions, which is worth something right now.
Where this leaves the grading market today
September 15 is an unusually busy day in grading. PSA opened a new $59.99 Standard tier yesterday, raised Express to $199 today, and starts accepting direct submissions at its Frankfurt facility today as well. SGC moved its cheapest tier to $50 earlier this month. CGC is still the reliable budget option for TCG, and TAG has been reopening tiers as its backlog normalizes. Beckett reopening Base and Standard puts a subgrade option back on the table for collectors who want it, but the infrastructure caveats mean it is not the frictionless choice it usually is.
The practical advice: if you specifically want a BGS slab with subgrades, and you are comfortable submitting through a form with no tracking for a while, the tier is open and pricing is unchanged. If you just want cards graded at a fair price with a turnaround you can plan around, PSA Standard or CGC will give you fewer surprises this month.
Many local card shops act as authorized submission centers for one or more graders and can walk you through the current options in person. Use our directory to find a shop near you and ask which graders they are sending to this month.