So you found your old stash of Pokémon cards and think you’ve got a treasure? Or perhaps you just pulled that shiny Secret Rare from a pack of cards. The next question on your mind is “How much is this card worth?”
Well that depends on what condition your card is in. We’ve already talked about preserving a card’s value by getting it professionally graded. But how do you know if your card is worth grading?
The first thing you need to know is how valuable your card is un-graded. The two largest North American vendors for un-graded trading cards are TCGPlayer and TrollandToad. Alternatively, you can search for a card name on Ebay and filter your results to “Completed” & “Sold” items. You’ll notice prices can vary by quite a bunch depending on how “played” the card is. Near-Mint, Lightly Played, Heavily Played, etc… are all blanket statements to describe the current condition of a card. Graded cards instead use a score and once a card is graded, that’s the condition the card is in forever!
When getting a card graded there are 4 categories that are looked at. The surface, the edges, the corners & the centering. Let’s take this card for example:
We’ll start with the centering. You can tell that the border on the right is thicker than it is on the left.
To obtain the prestigious PSA 10, these borders cannot exceed a 60:40 ratio. So unfortunately for this card, it has no hope of being a PSA 10.
On the surface however, there are no scratches! At least none that I could see. There are also no ink splotches or blemishes on the surface of the card. In fact, it’s in pretty pristine condition!
However, that’s only 2 of the 4 criterea. We still have to take a look at the corners and edges of the card. In the images below, I’ll point out all of the flaws that I’ve found with this particular card.
With that all being said… I predict this card to be PSA 7. But it could go either way. I would be happy to get an 8 and a bit disappointed if it’s a 6, though I would understand. So now, let’s check out the projected value of your card in it’s estimated condition. You can do this using the Auction Prices on PSA’s website or for specifically Pokémon cards, you can use PokemonPrice.com which is a fantastic site that compiles sales history of PSA graded Pokémon cards, all sorted by set!
Now that you’ve got a good idea of what your cards are worth, if you wanted to submit your cards for grading, it might be more economic for you to submit them through us! If you wanted more information on how that works, click here to check out our PSA Submission service.
