Should You Grade It

Grading means paying a company to rate a card's condition, give it a certificate number and seal it in a tamper-evident holder, called a slab. It costs money and a long wait, so it only makes sense when the math works or when you want the protection for a card you'll keep.

The break-even test

Before you send a card in, run this:

Graded sale × (1 − selling fee) must beat raw value + grading fee + shipping.

Here's a worked example. The sale prices and costs are made up, so use real ones in the calculator below. The fee is eBay's 13.25% for sports cards, which leaves you 86.75% of the sale. We leave out its 40-cent order fee to keep the sums short.

• You'd clear $20 selling it raw, after fees.
• Grading and shipping together come to $60.
• Your hurdle is $20 + $60 = $80.
• To clear it, the graded card has to sell for at least $92.22, because $92.22 × 0.8675 = $80.00.

Now say the same card sells for $150 at grade 10 and $60 at grade 9.

• Grade 10: $150 × 0.8675 = $130.13. That clears $80 by $50.13.
• Grade 9: $60 × 0.8675 = $52.05. That misses by $27.95.

Run it at the grade you're likely to get

Nobody controls the grade. If that card has a one in three chance of a 10 and otherwise comes back a 9, the average take is:

(1/3 × $130.13) + (2/3 × $52.05) = $43.38 + $34.70 = $78.08.

That's under the $80 hurdle, so on these numbers you'd sell it raw, even though the 10 looks great on its own. If a card only works at the top grade, it's a long shot. Put the calculator through the grade you hope for, then one grade lower.

We can't give you a flat premium for graded cards. It depends on the card, so look up raw and graded sales of the exact card with the finder on Card values.

When it tends to pay

• The gap is real. Sold prices for this exact card show a wide spread between raw and the grade you'd expect.
• The card looks clean up close. Check the centering, corners, edges and surface under a bright light before you pay anyone.
• You're keeping it. If the point is to protect a card you love, the slab is the purchase. Just know it won't pay you back.

It rarely adds up on a base card that sells for a few dollars raw, because the fee alone is more than the card.

Who grades cards

The names you'll see most are PSA, Beckett (BGS), SGC and CGC. CGC sells tiers by speed and by the card's value: its $17 Bulk tier stops at $500 a card, so a card worth more has to go in a higher tier.

The table below this guide shows only prices we read on a grader's own page on the date listed. So far that's CGC. We haven't read PSA's, SGC's or Beckett's current price pages, so nothing here comes from them. Check their sites directly before you compare.

Plan for the wait. CGC's page says its turnaround times are estimates, and they run from days to months depending on the tier. That wait is part of the cost if you're selling into a hot rookie.

Check the certificate

Every slab has a certificate number on its label. Before you pay for a graded card, type that number into the grader's own site yourself. Don't use a link or a code the seller sends you. Then match the year, set, player, card number and grade to the card in the photo.

In January 2026 a federal jury in Manhattan convicted a Washington man in a scheme built on PSA-style cases with "fraudulent labels, barcodes and certification numbers showing inflated grades." One 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan was advertised at about $171,000 with a top grade PSA had never given it.

So a number on a label proves nothing. A number that matches this exact card on the grader's own site proves a lot more. A slab shifts the question from "is this card real" to "has this slab been tampered with", and you still have to ask it.

Facts checked Nov 5, 2026.