Somewhere right now, on a livestream, someone is tearing open a foil package while hundreds of people watch. Trading cards have become a spectator sport. The card market is at all-time highs, cardboard repriced by the hour, rare cards selling for eight figures, and a general sense of frenzy. But watch enough of it and something strange becomes clear. Nobody is looking at the cards. The audience isn’t consuming images, it’s consuming anticipation.

The card boom has also surfaced hard questions, and the hardest ones surround grading. The past year saw the hobby’s dominant grading house facing scrutiny over grades that shifted after cards moved through its own buyback program,…

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