What happened
I bought a graded Lionel Messi card. It came in a slab, with a label and a grade on the front, everything a real graded card is supposed to have. I didn't know the company that graded it, but it looked official and the price seemed fair for a graded card.
Then I tried to sell it. Buyers who pay for graded cards look up the population reports and sales of a handful of companies, and this grader wasn't one of them. The slab kept the card safe but added nothing to its price, and anyone who wanted the card raw would have to pay to crack it out first.
The seller came out ahead. A card in an official-looking holder sells for more than the same card raw, and a new collector has no easy way to tell which labels the market respects. I didn't know that then. This site is what I wish I'd read first.
What this site is for
Help others learn from my mistakes, and make grading approachable.
What grading really means
What a grade measures, what a slab protects and what it doesn't, in plain language, before you pay for any of it.
What counts as a slabReal grading, or just a slab
Every grader is scored on the same terms, so you can see which ones the resale market trusts and which ones it treats as a raw card in plastic.
See the scorecardsGrade and collect with confidence
When a card is worth grading, how to read a population report, and how to spot a no-name grader before you buy one of its slabs.
Read the guidesIndustry concerns, in the open
Backlogs that run for months, price rises in the fine print, cheap tiers that pause without notice, and who owns which grader. Reported as it happens, sourced and dated.
Read the WireFair and affordable grading
Newer graders get the same hearing as the giants, and price counts in every score, so a good grader that costs less gets credit for it.
Compare two graders
Been burned too? Tell us
Collectors often spot trouble first: wait times slipping, cert lookups that stop working, grades that don't hold up, a slab sold as something it isn't. We log those reports against the grader they concern and check them. If something on this site is wrong or out of date, say so.