Condition & Grading Reference

Why this reference exists

Pricing a sports card without knowing its condition is guessing. RocketVault's pricing engine — and any conversation with Vault Agent — assumes a stated condition. When the condition is wrong, the comp set is wrong, and the price is wrong. This page is the single reference for how condition is described across the major grading companies and the raw-card market.

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Raw card terminology

Cards that have never been encapsulated by a grading company are "raw." Raw condition is described with shorthand that comes from the broader collectibles market:

• Gem Mint (GM) — pack-fresh, perfect centering, sharp corners, clean surface, no print defects. Effectively a PSA 10 candidate.
• Mint (MT) / NM-MT — looks brand new, but inspection reveals one or two minor flaws (slight off-center, a corner with a faint touch, a tiny surface impression).
• Near Mint (NM) — light handling visible: a soft corner, minor edge wear, light surface scuffs that don't break the print.
• Excellent (EX) — clearly handled but no creases or major defects; rounded corners, edge wear, light surface scratches.
• Very Good (VG) — visible creases, paper loss, or significant edge wear. Acceptable for vintage but discounted hard for modern.
• Good / Fair / Poor — major damage: heavy creases, tape, marker, missing chunks. Only valuable for vintage or rare cards.

Condition descriptors are subjective when unverified. A seller's "NM-MT" might be a buyer's "EX." For high-value cards, third-party grading turns subjective condition into a verifiable number.

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PSA grading scale

PSA uses a 1-10 numeric scale with a few half-grades on the high end.

• PSA 10 — Gem Mint — sharp corners, perfect centering (typically 55/45 or better on front), clean surface, full original gloss.
• PSA 9 — Mint — minor imperfections only visible under careful inspection.
• PSA 8 — Near Mint-Mint — slight surface or corner wear; centering up to 60/40.
• PSA 7 — Near Mint — minor flaws starting to be obvious; centering up to 65/35.
• PSA 6 — Excellent-Mint — light corner wear, light surface scratches.
• PSA 5 — Excellent — noticeable corner wear and edge whitening.
• PSA 4 — Very Good-Excellent
• PSA 3 — Very Good
• PSA 2 — Good
• PSA 1 — Poor
• PSA Authentic — verified genuine but the card has been altered (trimmed, cleaned, recolored, restored) and cannot be assigned a numeric grade. Significantly discounted vs the same card with a numeric grade.

Half-grades (PSA 8.5, 9.5) exist but are less common. The market generally treats PSA 9.5 as "just under PSA 10" and PSA 8.5 as a premium over PSA 8.

PSA 10 carries a meaningful market premium over PSA 9 for almost every popular modern card — often 2-5× for stars, sometimes 10×+ for ultra-condition-sensitive products (Topps Chrome, Bowman Chrome, Optic).

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SGC grading scale

SGC also uses a 1-10 numeric scale, with finer-grained half-grades (every 0.5 from 1 to 10).

• SGC 10 — Gem Mint — equivalent in spec to PSA 10 but reads tighter on centering; many collectors view SGC 10 as harder to earn than PSA 10 on modern cards.
• SGC 9.5 — Mint+
• SGC 9 — Mint
• SGC 8.5 — NM-Mint+
• SGC 8 — NM-Mint
• SGC 7-7.5 — Near Mint
• SGC 6-6.5 — Excellent-Mint
• ...etc down to SGC 1.

SGC is widely preferred for vintage cards because the black-tuxedo slab presents older cards well and SGC's centering tolerances historically have been more vintage-friendly. For modern cards, SGC sells at a market discount to PSA — often 20-40% lower for the same grade on the same card. The gap is shrinking as SGC's brand recognition has grown.

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BGS / Beckett grading scale

BGS uses a 1-10 scale with quarter-point granularity and a unique sub-grade system.

• BGS 10 Pristine — extremely rare. Requires all four sub-grades (centering, corners, edges, surface) at 10. The "Black Label" BGS 10 is the rarest condition slab on the market.
• BGS 10 (standard) — Gem Mint. All four sub-grades at 9.5 or higher.
• BGS 9.5 — Gem Mint. Effectively the BGS analog to PSA 10.
• BGS 9 — Mint.
• BGS 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, ... — same pattern down the scale.

BGS sub-grades (printed on the slab label) carry independent market value. Two BGS 9.5s with different sub-grade compositions can trade at different prices — the one with the strongest centering grade often wins.

BGS dominated autograph grading historically (the "10 Auto" sub-grade is the gold standard for on-card autographs). For non-auto cards, BGS market share has declined since 2020 in favor of PSA.

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Centering tolerances

Centering is measured as a ratio of left/right and top/bottom borders. Tighter centering equals higher grades.

A card that's perfect in every other way but 70/30 on the front will cap at PSA 7. Centering is the most common reason a clearly-mint card grades lower than expected.

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Vintage adjustments

Pre-1980 cards are graded against a different curve than modern cards. A 1968 Topps in PSA 7 condition is treated as a strong example because the production process produced few perfect copies. The same descriptors mean different things for vintage vs modern:

• A vintage PSA 7 is collectible and often valuable. A modern PSA 7 is typically a discount tier.
• Vintage centering tolerances are looser — graders accept 80/20 or worse on cards from the 1950s-60s without dropping the grade.
• Print defects (rough cuts, off-register printing, surface specks) are tolerated more on vintage because they're inherent to the era's manufacturing.

When asking about vintage condition, lead with the year — "EX-MT 6 vintage" implies different price expectations than "EX-MT 6 modern."

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How condition affects price

The graded-vs-raw premium scales with rarity and population:

• Common modern base card — graded PSA 10 might sell for 2-4× a raw NM-MT example. Below PSA 9, the slab often sells for less than the same card raw because grading + slab cost isn't recovered.
• Star rookie or popular insert — PSA 10 commonly 5-15× raw NM-MT. The gap from PSA 9 → PSA 10 is the steepest single-grade jump in the market.
• Vintage star — PSA 9 vintage is extraordinarily rare and often 50-100× a PSA 5 example. The grade curve is steep all the way up.
• Autographs — BGS 10 / PSA 10 with auto sub-grade 10 commands the highest premium of any single condition. Auto 9 vs Auto 10 alone can 2-3× the price.

When Vault Agent prices a card, it should always be told whether the card is raw or slabbed, and at what grade, so the comp set is correct. The default assumption when condition isn't stated is raw NM-MT.