We are not Professional Sports Card Graders!

However, being in the hobby for 20+ years, we have gotten fairly decent at being able to tell the difference between a Mint card(PSA 9) and a Near Mint(PSA 8) card or worse. For the purposes of evaluating condition for our breaks, we just need to be able to figure out the most important question when comping your sports cards.

"Will comps for other "Raw" cards be a fair comparison to card I am comping?"

We are always trying to add MORE value to our customers!!!

Others try to add more value to their own "net worth".

Wouldn't it make more sense and be less work and less headaches to just put all graded cards into your repacks?

-Less work? YES! Much, Much, Much less work for us!

-Less Headaches? Yes again! We know, inevitably you cannot please everyone and someone will complain about condition of something.

More sense? NO! Why you ask?

Because I said so, Damn it!

Every repack break is made up of ceilings (High value cards), mids (middle value cards), and floors (lowest value cards).

Floors have to be in repacks to have ceilings! That is just how it works. Math, damn it, math!

But if you hit a floor in a break, wouldn't it be nice to know that the current value has a chance to increase if it gets graded a PSA 10? So, your $50 card has a chance at becoming a $100-$200 card.

That is the goal here! To try to make floor cards not hurt so bad when you hit them. To try to be upfront about the condition of the raw cards in our repacks and give the buyer a chance to make a little more money. We can always find raw cards that will "gem", but we let you know when it has a chance to!!!!!!!

Our Main Goal When evaluating a raw card for our breaks:

When we are trying to decide on the value to give a card for one of our breaks, we need to decide a few things-

1. Is this card in good enough condition to consider "raw comps" as equal. If we feel it is in less than PSA 8 condition, than Raw comps ARE NOT GOING TO WORK FOR THIS CARD!!!!!!!!

2. If we feel that, when graded, the card will likely receive a PSA 8, PSA 9, or PSA 10; then we can use other raw comps to evaluate the price with.

3. If we feel the card would be a PSA 7, then we need to use graded comps (PSA 7 graded comps) to get our valuation.

4. A card that would grade less than a PSA 7 will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER intentionally be added to one of our breaks!

How do you evaluate the cards condition anyway?

There are 4 main things to look for when evaluating a raw card to determine its condition. In order of impact on grading:

Corners
Edges
Centering
Surface

Corners

Corners are viewed with a loop under a bright light.

Edges

Sames as corners, viewed with a loop under a bright light.

Centering

The digital age has helped with this one. We use a digital centering tool.

You can too if you click here!

Just take a photo of your card and upload to this site and practice!

Surface

This is the most difficult and most objective. Bright light is a must. Taking the card out of its protection is a must. Looking closely from different angles can reveal imperfections that you wouldn't otherwise see.