A graded card is somebody else's opinion, printed on a label and sealed in plastic. This page explains whose opinion, what the numbers mean, what the slab does and does not promise you, and how to check a cert yourself in about thirty seconds — before you pay us, or anyone.
What a slab actually certifies
When a card is graded, the company does three things and charges you for all three. It decides the card is genuine and unaltered. It assigns a condition grade against its own published standard. Then it seals the card in a tamper-evident holder with a label carrying a unique certification number.
That is the whole of it. Everything the slab guarantees is in those three lines:
- Authenticity. The company examined the card and judged it real, and not trimmed, recolored, restored or otherwise altered.
- A condition opinion, at one moment in time, under that company's standard, by that company's graders.
- Physical protection. The holder is a good one. A slabbed card survives handling, shipping and storage far better than a sleeved one.
What it does not certify is worth being blunt about, because the number on the label gets read as a price tag and it is not one:
- It is not a promise about future value. The grade says nothing about what the card will be worth tomorrow. Grading a card does not create demand for it.
- It is not a fixed scarcity. More copies of that card get graded every week, and the number holding any given grade only goes up.
- It is not permanent. A holder can be cracked, scratched, dented or sun-damaged after grading. The card inside stops being protected the moment the holder is compromised.
- It is not infallible. Graders are people working quickly. Cards get regraded and come back different. That is a known feature of the hobby, not a scandal.
We do not appraise cards, quote populations, value collections or give investment advice. We describe what the label says and photograph what we have.
The four companies, and what their numbers mean
Four graders account for nearly everything you will see in trading cards. Their scales all end at 10 and none of the tens mean the same thing.
| Company | Scale | Top of the scale | Subgrades |
|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 1 to 10, with half grades below 9 | PSA 10, Gem Mint | No subgrades on the standard label |
| BGS (Beckett) | 1 to 10, in half-point steps | BGS 9.5 Gem Mint, then BGS 10 Pristine, then the Black Label | Four, printed on every label |
| CGC (CGC Cards) | 1 to 10, in half-point steps | Gem Mint 10, then Pristine 10, then Perfect 10 | Four, on most modern labels |
| SGC | 1 to 10, with half grades | SGC 10 Gem Mint, then SGC 10 Pristine | No subgrades on the standard label |
A BGS 10 and a PSA 10 are not the same bar. PSA 10 Gem Mint is the top of a scale whose next step down is 9. BGS puts a 9.5 between them, which means a card can fall short of BGS 10 and still be, by PSA's standard, a clean Gem Mint. A BGS 10 Pristine is therefore a narrower grade than a PSA 10, and the Black Label — a BGS 10 with all four subgrades at 10 — is narrower again. CGC's Pristine 10 and SGC's Pristine 10 sit in roughly the same place above their own Gem Mint 10.
None of that makes PSA 10 a lesser grade. It is the grade the market trades most heavily in modern TCG, and the two facts are related: a bar that more cards clear produces a deeper market. What it does mean is that you cannot compare two slabs by reading the number and stopping. Read the company, the grade, and on a BGS label the four numbers underneath it.
How to read the four subgrades on a BGS label
Beckett grades four things separately and prints all four. They are the most useful thing on any label in the hobby, because they tell you why the card landed where it did.
| Subgrade | What it measures | What usually costs you points |
|---|---|---|
| centering | How evenly the borders frame the art, front and back | A cut off by a hair at the factory — nothing to do with handling |
| Corners | Sharpness of all four, under magnification | Softness, whitening, the faintest fray from a single shuffle |
| Edges | Cleanness of the four cut edges | Chipping and white specks, worst on dark-bordered cards |
| Surface | The face and back of the card itself | Print lines, scratches, dimples, color spots, holo scuffing |
The overall grade is not the average of the four. Beckett weights them, and the lowest subgrade pulls hardest. A card with 10 corners, 10 edges, 10 surface and 9 centering typically lands at 9.5 overall — and that single 9 is the whole story of the card. Two BGS 9.5s can be very different objects: one held back by centering it was born with, the other by a scratch someone put on it. If you care which, the label already told you.
PSA and SGC labels give you one number and no breakdown, which is why the photographs matter more on those. Look at the card, not just the label.
Check the cert number before you pay — from us or from anyone
Every slab carries a unique certification number on its label. All four companies run a free public lookup on their own website, and it takes about thirty seconds. Do this on every graded card you buy anywhere, at any price, from any seller. It is the single habit that keeps counterfeit holders and swapped labels out of a collection.
- Read the cert number off the label in the listing photograph. If it is cropped out, blurred, or covered by a watermark, that is your answer — ask for a clear photograph before anything else.
- Type the grading company's own web address yourself and find its cert verification or card lookup page. Do not use a link the seller supplies, ours included. A fake lookup page is easier to build than a fake slab.
- Enter the number and compare all of it — the set, the year, the card number, the character, the language, the art variant and the grade. A cert that returns a real card which is not the card in the photo means the label and the card have been separated.
- Look at the holder itself in the photographs. Label printing should be crisp, the card should sit square in the well, and the holder should have no seam, gap, glue line or reseal mark.
If a lookup ever fails to match a slab we sold you, email storeprcards@gmail.com with your order number and the cert number. That is a problem we want to hear about the same day, not in a month.
How we photograph, describe and handle slabs
- The photograph is that exact slab. Every graded listing is a one-of-one, shot individually. No stock images and no borrowed photographs of another copy.
- The cert number goes on your invoice. We check it against the label on the way out, and on any return we check it again on the way in.
- The label is quoted, not interpreted. Company, grade and where relevant the subgrades, as printed. We do not describe a slab as undergraded, unpressed, a strong 10 or a candidate for anything.
- Holders are never opened. We do not crack, re-holder, clean or resubmit. It is the same rule that keeps sealed product here unweighed, unsearched and never re-wrapped — what arrived is what ships.
- Slabs are stored flat, indoors, out of sunlight, and are handled only to pick and pack an order.
What is in the case right now
Thirty-four graded cards, $450 to $29,999. Thirty-three are PSA — thirty-two PSA 10s and one PSA 9 — and one is the BGS 10 Pristine Black Label Boa Hancock, the most expensive item in the store. There is no CGC or SGC slab here at the moment; both are described above because you will meet them elsewhere, not because we are holding one.
- Graded Cards — 32 slabs across One Piece, Pokémon, Magic, Disney Lorcana and Riftbound.
- One Piece Graded Cards — 20 slabs, the deepest single run in the store.
Look at both. Two of the One Piece slabs — including the BGS 10 — are currently listed in the One Piece graded collection only, so the general Graded Cards page is not the whole of what we hold.
Shipping a five-figure card
Slabs ship the way everything else here does — free and tracked on every United States order, with no minimum — with two additions that make the parcel insurable.
- Signature confirmation on anything over $500, and it cannot be waived. Every graded card in the store except one is priced at or above that line, so assume yours needs a signature and send it somewhere a person will be.
- A graded-card sleeve, a form-fit box, then an outer carton, with nothing on the outside naming what is inside.
The Shipping & Delivery Policy is the authority on transit times, carriers and holding a parcel at a pickup point. If you want it held rather than left at a door, tell us at checkout.
Returning a graded card
You have 30 days from delivery to start a return on a graded card, on two conditions that are not negotiable:
- It comes back in the original holder, undamaged.
- The cert number matches the invoice. We check it in, the same way we checked it out.
A cracked or re-holdered slab is not returnable. Once the holder is open the card is no longer graded — it is a raw card with a story attached, and no one can verify what it was when it left here. If a slab arrives damaged, tell us within 48 hours with photographs and we will sort it out as a transit claim rather than a return. The full terms, including who pays return shipping and how high-value returns must travel, are in the Returns & Refund Policy.
Buying at the top of the market? Email storeprcards@gmail.com before you order and we will send extra photographs of any slab — label, corners, both faces under angled light — and confirm the cert number in writing so you can verify it before you spend anything.