Card conditions, explained.

There's no rulebook for card conditions that the whole hobby agrees on. Every store and every grader draws the lines a little differently, and a lot of that gets waved off as "subjective". We'd rather not. If you buy a Lightly Played card from us online, or bring us a binder to look through at the counter, you should know what the label means before you walk in.

So we grade against a written standard with real definitions and real measurements, not by feel. It's the one TCGplayer published for its own authentication center, built from their experience, industry practice, seller feedback and the definitions most people already use. It's as close to a common language as the hobby has, and it's what every single on this site is listed against. Clear standards are what make two people at two different counters land on the same answer, and that's what makes a condition label worth anything.

"Conditioning" is not "grading"

Different people use different words for working out what shape a card is in. On this page, conditioning means sorting a card into one of the five named conditions above. Grading we save for the numbered scores (a PSA 9, a BGS 9.5) that a professional grading service gives a card in a slab.

Conditioning is a judgment of whether a card falls inside a range. There are millimetres and percentages further down this page, but nobody at our counter is putting a ruler on your cards. The numbers are there so the standard can be taught and repeated, and so "minor" means the same thing on a Tuesday as it does on a Saturday.

Every card, every game, every printing, the same way

Some standards treat foils, old cards or certain manufacturers more gently. There are fair reasons for that, but it means the same label ends up meaning different things on different cards. We want one label to mean one thing.

The way we square that: anything that happened to a card after it left the factory (wear, grime, bends, damage) is judged by the same criteria for every card, from every game and every manufacturer. Anything that is part of how the card was made (ink quality, centering, foil texture, the natural fading an old card picks up) is judged against what's normal for that manufacturer and that print run, because it's a characteristic of the card itself.

Oversized cards are 1.4 times bigger than a standard card, so every measurement on this page is allowed to be 1.4 times bigger on them.

Each condition allows a certain number of points of imperfections (how points work is just below), and only certain kinds. Edgewear turns up at every level, for instance, while a fault only exists on a Moderately Played card or worse.

Every imperfection on a card has a severity, and every severity is worth points. Add them up, and the total tells you the best condition the card can be in. A card with two minor scratches and some slight edgewear is at 5 points, so it can't be Near Mint, but it can be Lightly Played, as long as nothing on it is a kind Lightly Played doesn't allow.

Each kind of imperfection can be present to a different degree. The exact measurements for each kind are in the table at the bottom of the page. In plain terms:

A card's condition comes down to how many imperfections it has and how bad each one is. An imperfection is either a printing or manufacturing flaw that isn't normal for that card, or any wear or damage it picked up after it was printed. Every imperfection has a type (the ten below) and a severity (the four above).

Before any of that, there's a bigger question: is the card still whole? We call that its integrity, and there are three sides to it.

Each one goes by a few names. We've listed the ones you're likely to hear, so you can match what we say to what you've read elsewhere.

Some imperfections are just how a card came off the press. These are judged by how common they are for that manufacturer and that print run. Some manufacturers print so consistently that there's hardly any variation to allow for. Others vary a lot in ink, blur or centering from one run to the next, and we read a card from one of those runs in that context.

Defects fall into two groups.

Defects that affect the card's integrity. Crimps, miscuts, missing holofoil gems and anything else that compromises the card count as damage. We photograph a card like that and say so in the listing, and it's listed at the condition it would have earned without the defect.

Defects that don't affect integrity. Print errors, ink errors, missing ink and the like are judged by their severity. A slight one is ignored. A minor or moderate one drops the card one condition. A major one gets photographed and noted in the listing, at the condition the card would have earned without it.

Two defects come up often enough to have their own rules:

Curling. A card can lift up to 5 mm off a flat surface from curl without it counting against the condition. Any more than that and the card is Damaged.

Centering. Centering as far off as 70/30 doesn't count against a card. Anything past that gets photographed and noted in the listing, at the condition the card would otherwise have earned.

This is the part that makes the standard repeatable. Each kind of imperfection has a maximum size for each condition, as a measurement and as a share of the card. The percentages all refer to a standard Magic or Pokémon card.

Read across a row: the severity, then the biggest it can be, then what that is as a share of the card. "None" means that kind isn't allowed at all in that condition. "Any" means there's no limit.

An area in square millimetres is hard to eyeball. This is the same area as a square, with the length of its sides.