Most of the risk in owning a valuable card is concentrated in a few days: the days it spends in a box, in someone else’s hands, on its way somewhere. A card that has sat safely in a drawer for thirty years can be lost in a sorting depot in an afternoon. None of this is difficult to get right. It is simply easy to get slightly wrong, and at this level slightly wrong is expensive.
The short version
Pack the card so it cannot move. Photograph it before the box is sealed. Insure the box for what the card is worth, with insurance that will actually pay at that figure, and keep the evidence of value that a claim will ask for. Require a signature. Ship early in the week. And above a certain value — somewhere around fifty thousand dollars a box — stop thinking about carriers and start thinking about carrying it yourself.
Packing a slab
A graded holder is strong, but it is rigid, and rigid things crack when they are dropped corner-first or crushed. The aim is a box in which nothing touches anything hard and nothing can shift.
The slab itself. A fitted slab sleeve or a resealable bag keeps dust and scuffs off the case. Wrap it in two or three turns of bubble wrap, or set it in a purpose-made slab box with foam on both faces. Do not tape directly to the holder; tape residue on a case is the first thing a buyer or a grader notices.
The box. A new, sturdy corrugated box, not a padded envelope, with at least two inches of cushioning on every side. For anything that matters, use a box inside a box: the wrapped slab snug in a small box, that box floating in packing material inside a larger one. Close it and shake it. If you hear or feel movement, open it and add more.
Raw cards go first into a soft sleeve and then a semi-rigid holder (the kind the graders ask for), never a screw-down case if they are going to be graded, and are then packed exactly as above.
The outside says nothing. No mention of cards, no value, no collector’s name on the return line if a business name will do. A plain box is a dull box, and dull boxes are not opened.
Before you seal it, photograph the front and back of every slab with its certification number legible, and photograph the packed box, open and then closed. Write down the cert numbers and the tracking number in one place. If anything goes wrong, those pictures are most of your claim.
What the carriers will insure
This is the part most people get wrong, because the figures are lower than they expect. As of this writing:
USPS Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express can be insured to $5,000 a package. USPS Registered Mail is the exception: it can be insured to $50,000, and it travels under lock, signed for at every hand-off, which is why it is the oldest answer to this question. It is slow, it must be handed over at a Post Office counter, and the box must be sealed with paper tape — plastic tape is refused, because Registered items are marked across the seams. UPS will not accept a package declared above $50,000 under its standard terms.
Third-party insurance usually costs less than the carrier’s own and is bought with the label. Shipping software such as Pirate Ship includes InsureShield coverage up to $5,000 on a USPS package and $10,000 on a UPS one. Specialist collectibles insurers will go higher, and the graders work with them directly.
Whatever you buy, read what a claim requires. Every policy pays on proof of value — a purchase receipt, an invoice, or a record of what the same card at the same grade has recently sold for — and on proof of packing. Insurance bought for a figure you cannot support is insurance for a smaller figure. Above $5,000, two or three boxes, each within its limit, is often more sensible than one.
Sending a card to a grader
The graders have done this many thousands of times, and their own arrangements are usually the best ones available. PSA offers insured inbound shipping through the insurer Cabrella, carried by FedEx, covering up to $150,000 a box. On the way home, PSA chooses the method by declared value: ordinary insured shipping for most submissions, its own premium tiers above that, and armored carrier at the very top. Whatever you declare when you submit is what the return is insured for, so declare honestly in both directions.
Before you ship anywhere, read the grader’s terms on loss. Most limit their own liability to their fees plus whatever insurance you bought, and most give you only a few days after a box arrives home to report a problem. Open the return box the day it comes, on camera if the cards are valuable, and check each slab against your photographs.
Step by step: sending a PSA slab to MBA, and getting it back
Say you own a PSA 8 you believe is strong for the grade, and you want MBA’s opinion on it — a Diamond on the case. The card leaves your hands twice: once going, once coming home.
1. Ask for a look before you ship it. MBA will give an opinion from pictures first. Its Crossover Review takes a link to an auction listing, or your own sharp photos of the front and back (from a phone, add close-ups of each corner), and tells you whether the card looks like a candidate. As of October 2026 it costs $10 for an answer in about two business days, or $25 for one within a couple of hours, and whatever you pay is credited toward the Diamond submission if you go ahead. It is an opinion, not a promise, but it can save you shipping a card both ways for nothing.
2. Submit first, ship second. Place the order on MBA’s site before anything goes in a box, and use the shipping address and instructions MBA gives you with the order rather than one copied from a forum. Declare the card’s value honestly; MBA’s fee depends on it, and so does the insurance on the way back.
3. Read the terms. MBA, like the larger graders, limits what it owes if a card is lost or damaged in its care to its own fees and the insurance purchased, and asks you to report any problem with a return within five business days of delivery. That is not unusual. It is the reason your own insurance and your own photographs matter.
4. Pack and insure it to its value. Slab packed as above. Under $5,000, Priority Mail with third-party insurance and a signature. Between $5,000 and about $50,000, Registered Mail, or a specialist insurer. Above that, ask MBA whether it takes cards by hand at a show you can reach.
5. Coming home. The return is insured at the value you declared. If the card earns a Black Diamond it comes back in MBA’s own holder rather than PSA’s, so expect a different case. Photograph the new label and add it to the card’s record the day it arrives.
When to carry it instead
Above roughly $50,000 a box there is no ordinary carrier option, and above that the safest route is a person. The largest card shows have grader booths that take submissions by hand. PSA takes cards in person at its Jersey City office on its walk-in days, and accepts drop-offs at Dave & Adam’s retail store in New York. And a card that is going to be sold may never need to come home at all: graders and auction houses run vaults where a card can be stored, graded and consigned without leaving the building.
Store drop-offs
Some retailers now accept cards for grading at the counter — GameStop does so for PSA. It is a convenience for modern cards of modest value, and that is how it is designed: GameStop’s terms cap the insured value at $1,000 a card (as of September 2026) and disclaim responsibility for cards in transit to the grader. Inspect every card before you leave the store, and collect returns promptly; cards left unclaimed are eventually treated as abandoned. For anything this site follows, ship it yourself or hand it to the grader.
A checklist
Before it ships
Packing
Sending
When it comes back
And write it down. Where a card went, when, and what came back is part of its record — the part most collections are missing.