Cardboard Journal's Take
Degree Grading
Explains a grade better than almost anyone in the hobby — and almost nobody is buying the slabs.
What Sets Them Apart
The cert page is the product. Every Degree cert opens a live data page carrying the card's subgrade marks, the full grade distribution for the set, how this copy compares with every other graded copy, and a grader's notebook entry written during inspection — 'scuffing is present on the front, corner wear on the bottom left' — which no major grader publishes for an ordinary card. The population report is public and drillable by brand and set. The grading scale is arithmetic rather than judgement: 0–3 points each for surface, corners/edges and centering, plus one point for no creases or dents, with the bands published to the percentage and a calculator on the site. PRSRVD encapsulates a card in the same slab with no grade at all, for cards you want protected rather than scored.
Tier
Our rating of how well the resale market actually recognises this grader.
Turnaround
35 business days
The site publishes a live standard estimate, 35 business days when checked. Prepaying moves an order to a faster queue at about 27, and paid priority from $10 a card cuts it to roughly 18.
Backlog
No backlog figure published.
What They Grade
- Sports Cards
- TCG
Marketplace Acceptance
Certificate lookup:Verify a cert →
Effectively none. No eBay Authenticity Guarantee coverage, no auction-house category, and two listings found on eBay from one seller. That is the gap that matters here: the grading is documented better than most and the slabs still do not trade, so a Degree grade is information about your card rather than a number a buyer will pay for.
Pricing
$25 a card standard, or $15 a card in bulk at a ten-card minimum. A first submission is 5 cards for $50. PRSRVD — the same slab with no grade — is $18 a card, $11 in bulk. A submission kit with prepaid label and sleeves is $5, custom label colours are $3 a card, and paid priority starts at $10 a card. No membership and no card required to start a submission.
The Slab
A premium slab carrying a lifetime 'Slab Guard' guarantee on the encapsulation, returned in a Collector's Box built for an unboxing. Labels can be colour-matched to the card for $3, chosen after grading rather than at checkout.
Example slab shown for reference — not a card I personally own.
The Label
SubgradesFour, on the label
The front label carries the grade, the card identity and the cert number. The back label lists the four marks the grade is built from — surface, corners/edges, centering, and the creases/dents check — and the cert number opens the full live report.
Grader Use Cases
- Personal Collection
- Condition Documentation
- Protection & Preservation
For a card you are keeping and want to understand. Nobody at this price explains a grade as thoroughly, and PRSRVD is a genuinely useful option for a card you want in a slab without a number on it. Do not submit here expecting the grade to carry at resale: the market has barely seen these slabs, which is what the D records.
Known Concerns
Four, and three of them are visible on the company's own pages. The scale runs to 11 but the published arithmetic cannot reach it: three categories at three points each plus the one-point crease bonus totals 10, which is exactly what the sample cert shows, while the site's own calculator returns DEGREE 11 for a card at 100% across the board. The top grade is not explained by the formula published beneath it. Second, the marketing case is a selective top end — 'we would rather protect the meaning of a top grade than overuse it' — while its own published distribution for 2025 Topps NOW puts 54.7% of the set at DEGREE 10 and another 36.1% at 9. Third, the cert page's population maths contradicts itself: the Ohtani cert reads 'one of 0 copies' and '0 / 888' directly above a histogram showing 54.7%. Fourth, the resale market has barely encountered it — a search in September 2026 returned two Degree slabs listed on eBay, both from a single seller, both niche TCG cards at $15.
On The Wire
What the hobby is saying about Degree Grading, with our read on what it changes for you.
Nothing on the wire about Degree Grading yet — this fills in as it's collected.
History
Trades as Degree Grading from a mailbox address in Henderson, Nevada, with no founding date, owner or facility published anywhere on the site. It claims 25,000-plus collectors and a 4.2/5 rating, and the volume looks real: cert numbers sampled in September 2026 run in the 450,000s and 480,000s, and the public population report shows 888 cards graded from 2025 Topps NOW and 1,004 from one 1986 Topps team set.