How to pre-grade your own cards

Pre-grading is not predicting the grade. It is finding the reason a card will not get the grade you hoped for, so you can leave it out of the submission.

What you need

• A loupe or a phone macro lens.
• A bright, single, directional light. Not a ceiling light.
• A straight edge or a printed centring guide.

Centring first, because it is decisive

Measure the border on each side, front and back. Do not judge it by eye: the eye compensates and will tell you a card is centred when it is measurably not. The back is assessed too, and is frequently worse than the front on the same card.

Corners under magnification

Look for fraying and softness rather than obvious damage. A corner that reads as sharp at arm length can show fibre separation at magnification, and that is the level the grade is decided at.

Surface under raking light

Tilt the card against a single light source so the light skims the surface. Scratches, print lines and dimples that are invisible flat-on appear immediately. Chrome and foil cards show everything under this test, which is why they are hard to grade well.

Be harsh. The expensive mistake is optimism, not pessimism: you pay the same fee for a 7 as for a 10.

Then run the sum

Take the grade you now honestly expect, drop it one to be safe, and put that into the calculation in is grading worth it. The relationship between that grade and what the card fetches is in what grading does to the price.