Grading card condition consistently: Near Mint to Damaged, and how to price the gap
Condition disputes are the most expensive kind of return: you pay shipping both ways and lose the sale. Most come from inconsistent grading, not dishonest grading. Here is a practical scale, a fast grading routine and a pricing approach that keeps buyers happy.
The five-step scale most marketplaces use
| Grade | Front | Edges and corners | Typical market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Near Mint (NM) | No visible scratches or clouding under normal light; may have a tiny print-line or minor edge wear on closer inspection. | At most a couple of small nicks of whitening. | 100% of market |
| Lightly Played (LP) | Light scuffs or scratches visible when tilted; still clean in a sleeve. | Minor whitening on several edges or corners, no bends. | roughly 80–90% |
| Moderately Played (MP) | Scratches and scuffs visible at a glance; possible light clouding. | Noticeable whitening; slight edge bends or a small indentation acceptable. | roughly 65–80% |
| Heavily Played (HP) | Heavy scratching, creases that do not break the surface, water marks. | Heavy whitening; corners rounded. | roughly 50–65% |
| Damaged (DMG) | Tears, holes, ink, warping, writing, or creases that break the surface. | Anything below HP. | case by case |
The exact wording differs between marketplaces, and Europe’s Cardmarket uses a seven-step scale, but the shape is the same. Whatever scale you adopt, write it down and grade against the written version, not against memory.
A grading routine you can do in three seconds
- Front under a light, flatLook for scratches, clouding and print defects. Anything visible flat is at least LP.
- Front tilted 45 degreesTilting reveals surface scuffing and clouding that hide when flat. Tilt scratches only are LP; visible flat is MP.
- Edges and cornersCount whitened spots. One or two small ones is NM; whitening along an edge is LP; rounded corners are HP.
- Back and bendCheck the back for whitening and the card for warping or a crease. A crease that does not break the surface is HP; one that does is Damaged.
- Sleeve and gradeRecord the grade before the card goes back into the box. Batch by grade so pricing is one operation later.
Pricing the gap between conditions
Market data for played copies is thinner than for Near Mint, so most sellers price played conditions as a percentage of the NM market price. The percentages in the table are common starting points; adjust by card. Old-border staples sell closer to NM in played condition because clean copies are rare, while modern bulk in MP condition is often unsellable at any discount.
Per-condition market data, where it exists, is better than a percentage. LGSTome shows per-condition prices for games where the data is available and lets the repricing wizard and nightly auto-repricer apply a percentage of market per condition otherwise, so your LP copies move with the market alongside your NM ones.
Photographs and descriptions
- For anything above a few dollars in LP or below, photograph the actual copy front and back. Stock images are fine for NM.
- Name the defect in the listing: “light surface scratching visible when tilted” resolves more disputes than “LP”.
- Never grade foils as NM without a flat check. Foils curl, and a buyer who wanted a flat foil for a deck will send a warped one back.
Try this with your own binder. LGSTome is free for your first 1,000 cards.
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