MBA Management

Mike Baker, Chairman & CEO

With over three decades of experience, Mike Baker is the longest serving professional grader and authenticator in the country. He has personally graded millions of trading cards and is considered to be a pioneer in the business.

Mike has been an innovator and through rigorous research and development Mike helped establish the industry-wide and accepted grading standard; applying a 1 to 10 scale based on the condition of a trading card. Today, there are tens of millions of trading cards in the marketplace that have been graded under this standard.

At the age of 20, Mike began his professional career in the numismatic business in 1989 as a coin processor for Professional Coin Grading Services (PCGS). In 1991, Mike became the first employee of Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), a sports card grading and authentication firm. He soon became the Director of Grading and over the next decade trained and managed the PSA grading staff. He was also appointed the youngest member of the Senior Executive Management Team for Collectors Universe, the parent company of PSA.

Mike has traveled extensively across the United States meeting and educating thousands of collectors on how to apply the grading standard to their cards. He has been a developer in the field of identifying counterfeit and altered trading cards. Featured on ESPN, Fox News, KTLA, KLSX and The Judge Judy Show, he has authored countless articles and his opinion is highly valued by collectors throughout the collecting community.

In short, his knowledge, expertise and comprehension of card grading is unprecedented.

As Mike jumps back into a full-time sports cards review world, he looks forward to working with new and returning collectors. He often reminds collectors, in the words of Babe Ruth, “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game”. The big finds, the “Diamonds”, are still out there!