Collector tools
Should you grade it?
Pick a card and tell us what condition it is in. You’ll get the most you should pay for it raw, what each PSA grade would actually put in your pocket after fees and postage, and how often this card really earns each one. When a card is graded too rarely to be sure, we say so instead of guessing.
How this works
Every number in the tool is explained below, and each one carries the same explanation on its info icon.
The method
What is the one number I should take away?
The most you should pay for the card raw. Pay under it and grading is expected to pay for itself; pay over it and it is not.It is a property of the card rather than of a particular deal, so it does not move when the price you type moves, which is what makes it something you can carry to a listing and act on.
Which costs are subtracted?
The PSA fee for the service level this card is actually eligible for, postage to PSA, insured return postage, the marketplace final-value fee on the eventual sale, and postage out to the buyer. The marketplace fee is the real tiered schedule rather than a flat percentage.Skipping the postage and the selling fee, as a fee-only calculator does, overstates the profit on a typical card by more than half.
Where do the odds come from, and how far can I trust them?
They are PSA’s own population report for that exact card: the share of every copy ever graded that came back at each grade. It is a real base rate rather than a guess, but two limits matter. It is not a scan of your card, so it says nothing about the centering or the edge you are actually holding.And it is self-selected, because collectors send in their better copies, so it runs optimistic for a card nobody has inspected closely. Telling us the card is lightly or moderately played shifts the whole distribution down the ladder to compensate.
Why does a grade sometimes show "no sales"?
Because we will not price an outcome we have no evidence for. Those grades count as zero toward the expected value, which is deliberately conservative, and we tell you how much of the probability that covers. If a large share of the likely outcomes is unpriced, the real ceiling is somewhat higher than the one shown.
What does "buy one already graded" mean?
It means somebody is currently asking less for a slabbed copy than it would cost you to buy this raw and grade it yourself, and you would be taking none of the risk of missing the grade. We read that from the cheapest clean asking price we track at each grade.
Why does it refuse to answer for some cards?
Below roughly fifty graded copies the distribution is noise rather than signal: one more PSA 10 would swing the odds by percentage points. Rather than dress that up as precision, the tool says it cannot judge the card.
Is this investment advice?
No. It prices the average outcome across many cards, and grading a single card is a gamble. The model can be right about a hundred submissions and still be wrong about the one in your hand.
Population data is sourced from PSA; grading and postage costs are modelled and change over time. Figures are estimates for research, not investment advice.