The grading scale
Grades run from 1 to 10, in half points, and every card gets all four sub-grades. No tier skips them. Here is what each grade looks like, and the centering each one allows.
-
10
Perfect 10
Every axis scores a 10: centering, corners, edges and surface. Flawless to the eye and it holds up under magnification. The rarest grade we issue.
Every axis 10 -
10
Gem Mint
Sharp corners, clean edges and full original gloss. Any flaw is invisible to the eye and barely there under magnification.
Front 52/48Back 55/45 -
9.5
Mint+
Sharp corners and clean edges. Under magnification a single faint touch of wear or one speck may show. Full gloss.
Front 55/45Back 60/40 -
9
Mint
Four sharp corners with only slight wear under magnification. Edges clean to the eye. Full gloss, with a small speck or spot allowed.
Front 60/40Back 65/35 -
8.5
NM-MT+
Corners sharp to the eye with light wear visible up close. Minor edge wear. The surface keeps its gloss, with light marks.
Front 65/35Back 70/30 -
8
NM-MT
Slight wear on corners and edges, visible to the eye. Minor scratches or print marks on the surface, which keeps most of its gloss.
Front 70/30Back 75/25 -
7.5
NM+
Light corner wear and minor whitening along the edges. A few light scratches or scuffs on the surface.
No centering step at this grade -
7
NM
Visible corner wear and some edge whitening. Light surface scratching, with the gloss mostly intact.
Front 75/25Back 80/20 -
6.5
EX-MT+
Noticeable wear on corners and edges. Surface scratches are visible and the gloss is slightly reduced.
No centering step at this grade -
6
EX-MT
Clear wear on the corners, perhaps light rounding. Edge wear with minor chipping. Surface wear is visible, but there are no creases.
Front 80/20Back 85/15 -
5.5
EX+
Rounding beginning on the corners. Chipping along the edges. Surface wear and some loss of gloss, still without creases.
No centering step at this grade -
5
EX
Rounded corners, noticeable edge chipping, and a scuffed, duller surface. A very light crease may be present.
Front 85/15Back 90/10 -
4.5
VG-EX+
Rounded corners and moderate edge wear. A light crease or several surface marks.
No centering step at this grade -
4
VG-EX
Clearly rounded corners, worn edges, surface wear and light creasing.
Front 90/10Back — -
3.5
VG+
Heavy wear on the corners and edges, with creasing visible. The card is intact.
No centering step at this grade -
3
VG
Heavy wear throughout: creases, scuffing and a dull surface. The card is still whole.
Front —Back 95/5 -
2.5
Good+
Significant wear and several creases, with possible minor staining. The card is complete.
No centering step at this grade -
2
Good
Heavily worn, with major creases, rounding and surface damage.
Front 95/5Back Worse than 95/5 -
1.5
Fair
Severe wear and damage: deep creases, tears or staining. Still identifiable.
No centering step at this grade -
1
Poor
Extensive damage throughout. Graded for what remains.
Front Worse than 95/5Back —
Centering is measured: every card's borders are checked against the numbers above. Corners, edges and surface are judged. The descriptions say what each grade looks like, and the grader reviewing your card makes the final determination on every axis.
The four axes
- Centering: how squarely the printed image sits within the card's borders.
- Corners: sharpness, whitening and dings on all four corners.
- Edges: chipping, whitening and roughness along all four edges.
- Surface: scratches, print lines, creases, dents and holo wear.
An AI takes the first pass. A person confirms every card.
An AI proposes all four sub-grades from our photographs of the card. A person, with the card itself in hand, confirms or overrides every one of them before anything is final. The model can propose centering, corners, edges or surface. There is no composite option in what it is allowed to send back, so it cannot propose an overall grade at all.
Every card scores out of 1000
Each axis is worth a fixed number of points, and your card earns a share of each one. Add the four up and you have a score out of 1000. It is printed on your label and on your certificate page.
| Axis | Points | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Centering | 300 | 30% |
| Corners | 234 | 23.4% |
| Edges | 233 | 23.3% |
| Surface | 233 | 23.3% |
Centering is worth the most, and that is the one decision in here worth explaining. It is the only axis that is measured rather than judged — every card's borders are checked against the numbers published above — and it is the one axis you can check for yourself against the photographs on your own certificate. Weighting the axis a collector can verify is the opposite of weighting one they cannot.
PSA and BGS weight their composites too, and more heavily: both lean on the lowest sub-grade, so a single weak axis can cap the whole card. Ours caps nothing. Three 10s are worth what three 10s are worth, whatever the fourth axis says.
The overall grade is derived, never typed over
Your overall grade is the score divided by a hundred, rounded to the nearest half point, ties upward. A score of 988 is a 10. There is no field on the grading form to enter a grade by hand; the server computes it from the score every time a grade is recorded.
We took the field away on purpose. A composite typed in by hand can disagree with the numbers printed beside it: a 10 sitting over sub-grades of 8, 8, 8.5 and 7.5, with nothing to catch it, sealed in plastic for good. There is nowhere left on our form to type a number that argues with its own parts.
You can check our arithmetic against the sub-grades on your own certificate page, which is more than most graders invite you to do.
One place the check will not come out even
When a grader marks a defect on your card — a scratch, a corner ding, whitening along an edge — it takes points off the axis it sits on. Small ones take off less than half a step, so the sub-grade printed on your label can stay where it is while the score moves underneath it.
So on a card with defects marked, adding up the four sub-grades can come out a few points above the score printed beside them. The score is the more precise of the two. Both are recorded at the moment the card is graded and neither is ever recalculated afterwards: what is sealed in the case is what the page will say for as long as the slab exists.
Here is the arithmetic worked through on an example certificate — one with nothing marked on it, so every number adds up.
How the ten was reached
Cert WT-7K3M-92QH
The score lands in the upper half of the interval, so the nearest half point is 10.0 and not 9.5. The gold segment is everything that rounds up.
300 + 234 + 221 + 233 = 988
→988 ÷ 100 = 9.880, nearest half point = 10.0
Each axis contributes its sub-grade out of ten, times the points that axis is worth: 9.5 out of 10 on edges is 221 of 233.
Centering is worth 300 of the 1000 because it is the one axis that is measured rather than judged — and the one you can check for yourself against the photographs on this page. The other three split the remaining 700 evenly.
What the numbers are, and what they are not
The centering figures are real measurements. The bench measures the borders on both faces and reads the result off the ladder in the scale above, on scale version 2. A card that measures 58/42 on the front cannot score a 10 for centering, and it does not.
Corners, edges and surface have no ladder, and we do not pretend otherwise. What separates a 9 from a 9.5 on those axes is a judgement, made by a person looking at the card itself, in hand. The descriptions tell you what each grade looks like; the grader decides. We would rather show you the photographs and let you argue with us than print a number that claims more precision than a grader has.