Is it worth grading your card?
Grading costs $15 to $300 a card before shipping, and the grade is not guaranteed. This calculator turns the decision into a number: what the card is likely to sell for after grading at each of the six services, minus that service's current fee, against selling it raw.
How the number is made
- The centering you enter (or 50/50 if you leave it blank) is checked against every service's published centering line, front and back, giving the highest grade each service could award for centering alone.
- Your read of the corners, edges and surface caps that grade and sets the chance of reaching it: 55% for a card that looks perfect, 40% with one minor flaw, 25% with two, 15% with visible wear. The slider overrides it.
- The remaining chance is spread over the next three grades down, 60/28/12.
- Each grade is priced from what you entered: the company's own 10 where you gave one, the generic grades below it, interpolated where you left a gap. A service whose top reachable grade has no price gets a question mark, not a verdict.
- The best-case value picks the cheapest tier from each service's fee table whose value cap covers it.
- Expected sale minus the fee, compared with the raw price: YES or NO per service, and the best one.
Selling costs, shipping and insurance are not included; add them yourself if they matter to you. Lines and fees are as published on the dates shown on the Standards and Fees pages.
Collecting a particular game? The same calculator with notes for Pokémon cards and sports cards.
Questions
What does “worth grading” mean here?
The expected sale price after grading, minus the grading fee, is higher than the card's raw price. Expected sale price is the sum over the grades the card could get of the chance of that grade times its sale price. A YES is a comparison of estimates, not a promise of any grade.
Where do I get the prices?
Recent sold listings: eBay's sold and completed filter (the calculator links to it for the card name you type), or a price guide you subscribe to. Enter the ungraded price and whichever graded prices you can find; gaps between grades are interpolated.
Why does it ask about corners, edges and surface?
Centering is one of four things graders check. Your answer caps the highest grade the card can get (perfect: 10 possible; minor wear: 9; visible wear: 7) and sets the default chance of that top grade, which you can change with the slider.
What centering should I enter?
The heavier side's share on each axis, for example 57 for a card that is 57/43 left to right. Leave the boxes blank for a perfectly centred card. Eyeballing centering is the weak point of the estimate; SlabbyPrep measures it from a photo to a hundredth of a millimetre.
Which services and fees are used?
PSA, BGS/Beckett, CGC, SGC, TAG and ACE, using each company's published centering lines and fee tables, checked on the dates shown on the Standards and Fees pages. For each service the cheapest tier whose value cap covers the card's best-case value is used.
Is this a guarantee?
No. Every figure is an estimate built from published standards, published fees and the prices you enter. Grading companies decide grades at their discretion and change fees without notice; prices move. Check the official sources before you spend money.