Grading

This section covers card grading: what it is for, which company to use, and how to send cards without losing money or damaging them. The ten guides are mostly by Ian. They treat grading as a decision with real costs, and stress that a grade turns an unknown condition into a permanent public number, which can help or hurt a card's value.

Three guides help you decide whether to grade at all. "How to Run a Grading Break-Even in Two Minutes" sets out the arithmetic of total cost against the raw price net of fees. "How to Spot a Card That Won't Grade Well" shows how to check centering, corners, edges and surface yourself. "How to Know When Raw Beats Slabbed" lists the kinds of cards that are worth more ungraded.

Four guides deal with PSA specifically. They cover picking the right service tier by declared value, packing a submission so it arrives as it left, tracking it through the status stages, and reading every line of a PSA slab label. Three guides cover the alternatives. "How to Choose Between PSA and CGC" compares how the two grading scales differ above a 9. "How to Read a CGC Label" explains each field, including CGC's two different tens. "How to Decide If Beckett Is Worth It" explains Beckett's four subgrades, and why its overall grade is not simply their average.

Grading sits under Trading Card Games in the HowTo Gaming menu. It has 3 sections: Should You Grade It, PSA and CGC & Other Graders.