Card grading: how it works
Grading turns one of your cards into a graded slab — a permanent grade from 1 to 10 that multiplies its value. In the real world, services like PSA, BGS and CGC grade a physical card on corners, centring, surface and edges; a Gem Mint 10 first-edition Charizard is worth orders of magnitude more than a played copy.
How to grade a card
- Open the Grading tab inside the Shop section.
- Pick one or more cards from your collection. Favourited cards and already-graded cards cannot be re-graded.
- Confirm the total cost. Each card costs 25% of its market value, with a minimum of 10 coins.
- Submit. The card is locked while it is at the grader.
- Wait one hour. A push notification arrives when it is done, if notifications are enabled.
- Open the Grading tab to see the new grade. Slabs join your collection automatically.
Grade distribution
Grades are rolled randomly using these weights.
| Grade | Chance | Value multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1% | 0.5x |
| 2 | 2% | 0.6x |
| 3 | 4% | 0.7x |
| 4 | 7% | 0.8x |
| 5 | 10% | 0.9x |
| 6 | 15% | 1.0x |
| 7 | 22% | 1.3x |
| 8 | 22% | 1.6x |
| 9 | 12% | 2.2x |
| 10 | 5% | 5.0x |
The distribution skews toward the middle — most cards come back as a 7 or 8. Grade 10, Gem Mint, is the jackpot at 5%.
Is grading worth it?
The expected return is roughly 1.49x the card value, weighted across all possible grades. After the 0.75x sell rate, the average graded slab sells for about 1.12x the original value. Subtract the 0.25x grading cost and the net gain is roughly 12% of card value on average — but the variance is enormous. A single grade 10 makes up for many sub-7 grades.
- Cheap cards — The 10-coin minimum makes grading anything under about $0.40 a guaranteed loss in expected value. Do not grade dollar commons.
- Vanity slabs — Grading a card you intend to keep is about flavour, but the multiplier still applies to your collection total, which feeds the leaderboard and the value-based achievements.
Tips
- Favourite the cards you want to keep. Favourites cannot be sold or traded, so they are safe even if a slab comes back as a 1.
- Grade in batches. One hour is one hour whether you are grading one card or twenty.
- Higher-value cards benefit more in absolute terms — a 5x on a $100 card is worth far more than a 5x on a $1 card.