Cardboard Journal's Take
Granite State Grading
Grades with AI-assisted inspection and publishes a publicly verifiable cert for every slab — but it is not taking submissions from the public yet.
What Sets Them Apart
Software-assisted image analysis applied to the same four areas on every card — centering, corners, edges and surface — with all four subgrades printed on the front label. What sets it apart is the evidence: cards are shot overhead and again under low-angle rake lighting, and GSG publishes paired examples showing edge recesses and corner folds that a flat overhead image hides. Every slab carries a QR-backed cert page with the card record, the subgrades and slab images. A gold label is reserved for Pristine 10 — a 10 in all four subgrades — separating it from a Gem Mint 10 that got there without perfect subgrades.
Tier
Our rating of how well the resale market actually recognises this grader.
Turnaround
Not open yet
Public submissions have not opened. GSG says it is validating capacity first and is taking email addresses for a notification list.
Backlog
No backlog figure published.
What They Grade
Not yet recorded.
Marketplace Acceptance
Certificate lookup:Verify a cert →
Early. Slabs exist and turn up on eBay, and every one of them can be checked against a public cert page, which is more than several established graders offer. What does not exist yet is a resale record: nothing shows what the market pays for a GSG slab relative to the same card in another holder.
Pricing
Not published. The company says grading will be economically priced when submissions open, which is a claim rather than a price.
Prices change often, so we link to each grader's own list rather than copying figures that go stale.
The Slab
Example slab shown for reference — not a card I personally own.
The Label
SubgradesFour, on the label
Grader Use Cases
- Condition Documentation
- Personal Collection
Nothing to decide yet — submissions are not open. When they are, the case for GSG is documentation: four subgrades on the label, a public cert page and published inspection imagery, on a card you are keeping rather than selling. The D is about the resale market, which has no record of this holder at all, not about the grading.
Known Concerns
Three, and none of them is a closure. Public submissions have never opened, so there is no published price, no turnaround anyone can hold them to, and no service record to judge — only the grading itself. The grading is AI-assisted, which is the pitch and also the open question: consistency claims cannot be checked from outside, and the resale market has not yet priced whether it trusts them. And the abbreviation GSG belongs to Gold Standard Grading on this site as well, a far larger European grader, so a slab or listing marked GSG needs checking before either company is assumed.
On The Wire
What the hobby is saying about Granite State Grading, with our read on what it changes for you.
Nothing on the wire about Granite State Grading yet — this fills in as it's collected.
History
A New Hampshire company trading as GSG, based at 2 Washington Street in Dover and operating since 2024. Cards are being certified and are appearing on eBay, with cert numbers running into the 1200s, but public submissions have never opened: the company says it is completing capacity validation first and is running a notification list until then. An earlier version of this entry recorded the company as defunct on the strength of a similarly named domain that now redirects to a gambling site. That was wrong. The live operation is at gsgrading.com and is publishing new certs.