Grading Guide
Basic advice
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We HIGHLY recommend grading with PSA as they hold the most value.
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We DO NOT recommend grading cards that would hold a value of $60 or less in a PSA 10. Keep in mind it costs $20-$25 just to grade with PSA.
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A PSA 10 is not guaranteed even if your card is freshly pulled from a pack. A PSA 10 requires an almost flawless card. A freshly pulled card will usually grade an 8 or 9.
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The point of grading is to get a grade of 10, PSA 9’s often sell for less than the value of an ungraded near mint card.
Resources
How to evaluate your card for grading
The most important aspects of your card to examine will be centering, corners, and surface. We recommend going in that order.
A PSA 10 is close to perfect in all dimensions. A card with perfect corners and surface will not get a 10 if its centering is off, and vice versa.
Centering
PSA centering standards require a card to be 55/45 or better on the front, and 75/25 on the back.
Here is an example of a nicely centered card, basically 50/50.
And here is an example of a card with worse than 60/40 centering
CORNERS & WHITENING
Due to the way Pokemon cards are cut, the corners of cards are often left with small areas of whitening. If more than one corner has whitening, or one corner has whitening greater than the size of a pencil dot, your card will not be eligible for a PSA 10
While whitening on the edges of a card is less common on a near mint card, it is still important to check the edges as well.
Here is an example of a card with a corner dot right out of the pack that likely would not get a PSA 10.
SURFACE:
Often the hardest to see, cards may have certain surface imperfections. Examples of this include “print lines”, which occur when there is a slight issue with the machinery used in production. This creates a line that interrupts the image, text, or borders. They can be both horizontal and vertical.
Cards can also come with light scratches on the front or backs of cards which are hard to see without good lighting. This card is nearly damaged but it's very hard to see without the right lighting.
Here is a card with surface issues you might miss without the right light but will not grade well.
Grading with companies other than PSA
CGC
CGC is great for error cards as they will recognize the errors, whereas PSA will not.
CGC offers “Pristine 10’s” or “Gold Label 10’s” which can equal or exceed the value of a PSA 10, however these are harder to get than a PSA to.
A regular CGC 10 will not sell for as much as a PSA 10, therefore are very hit or miss to grade with.
Beckett (BGS)
Similar to CGC, Beckett also offers “Pristine 10’s” or “Black label 10’s” which often double or triple the value of a PSA 10, however it is NOTORIOUSLY hard to grade a Black Label. A Beckett Black Label is the highest grade value of any grade we are aware of.
Beckett is also great if you specifically want to know what exactly your card is missing as there is an option to include subgrades on the slab.
Beckett says a 9.5 in their grading system is similar to a 10 from other grading systems, and they call a 9.5 "Gem Mint", a 10 "Pristine" and then have the super rare Black Label as mentioned.
A Beckett 9.5 "Gem Mint" has value substantially below PSA 10 Gem Mint.
TAG
TAG is the newest company and uses Computers/AI to grade, so your results will be more reliable (according to TAG at least). You will get a full computerized readout of your results on the web, which is cool. The readout will show you what parts of your card have issues.
TAG also offers a “Pristine 10” which has a value often above PSA 10, but it is very hard to get. TAG grades on a 1000 point scale, with a 950 or greater being "Gem Mint" similar to PSA 10 or BGS 9.5 and a 990 or greater as Pristine similar to a BGS 10.
Overall advice on non-PSA companies
Go with PSA unless you really know what you're doing. If you need to read this web page to learn about grading, you should probably grade with PSA.