Cardboard Journal's Take
C3 Grading
A brand-new flat-rate grader with a distinctive horizontal slab — and nothing independent yet to judge it on.
Owned byIndependent
Visit c3grading.com →
What Sets Them Apart
Flat-rate pricing regardless of declared value, which removes the value-tier upcharge that dominates PSA and Beckett pricing. Two graders review each card. A QR-linked digital report carries the four subgrades and the reasoning. The slab is horizontal — unusual enough to be the first thing a buyer notices.
Tier
Our rating of how well the resale market actually recognises this grader.
Turnaround
3–5 weeks
3–5 weeks is the company's own stated average. No independent submitter reports were found to check it against.
Backlog
No backlog figure published.
What They Grade
- Sports Cards
- TCG
Marketplace Acceptance
None established. No eBay Authenticity Guarantee coverage and no resale data found.
Pricing
Flat rate per card with no declared-value upcharges, which is the company's main pitch. Exact tier prices are published only on a client-rendered page that did not load, so no figure is recorded here rather than guessing one.
The Slab
A horizontal layout rather than the vertical holder almost everyone else uses, with colour-matched labels and a completion date stamped on the slab. The horizontal format is the most visible thing about the company.
Example slab shown for reference — not a card I personally own.
The Label
SubgradesFour, online only
Every slab carries a QR code linking to a full digital grading report with subgrades for centering, corners, edges and surface. The subgrades live in that report rather than on the label.
Grader Use Cases
- Personal Collection
- Condition Documentation
Only for a card you are keeping. The flat rate is genuinely cheaper than a value-tiered grader once a card is worth anything, and the QR report carries four subgrades with the reasoning — but nothing about the company has been checked by anyone outside it, and the horizontal slab is the least familiar holder in the hobby. The D is the market, not the grading: there is no resale data on a C3 slab at all.
Known Concerns
Everything about this record is the company's own account of itself. C3 does not appear in the 160-plus company directory this site cross-checks against, no independent reviews or submitter reports could be found, and there is no visible secondary-market presence — so none of the claims about accuracy, consistency or turnaround can be checked. The registered address is a private mailbox rather than a facility, which is ordinary for a young LLC and means nothing on its own, but it does mean the physical operation is not locatable from public sources. Treat the whole entry as unverified until a real submission or a pop report says otherwise.
On The Wire
What the hobby is saying about C3 Grading, with our read on what it changes for you.
Nothing on the wire about C3 Grading yet — this fills in as it's collected.
History
C3 Grading LLC, registered at a Dania Beach, Florida mailing address. The site is a BigCommerce storefront on an off-the-shelf template, carrying a 2026 copyright, and positions the company as 'built by collectors, for collectors'. No founding date is published.