"Graded is worth more" is true often enough to be dangerous.
When grading adds a lot
- High-value vintage cards where authenticity is a real buyer concern.
- Cards where a 10 is genuinely scarce — the premium comes from the scarcity of the grade, not the grading itself.
- Cards you intend to hold, where a slab protects condition indefinitely.
When grading adds nothing
- Modern bulk. Grading a card worth £5 costs more than the card, whatever the grade.
- Mid grades on common cards. A PSA 8 of a widely graded modern card often sells for less than a clean raw copy, because the slab has removed the buyer's hope that it might have been a 10.
- Cards where the population is already enormous. If there are 40,000 PSA 10s, the grade is not scarce.
The number that matters is the spread
Look up what the card sells for raw, at a 9, and at a 10. If 9 and raw are close and only 10 carries a premium, grading is a lottery ticket, not an investment — and the odds are worse than most people assume.
Getting the odds before you bet
The AI grader predicts the grade from a photo across the PSA, BGS, CGC and ACE scales and shows the sub-grades that drive it. Match the card to our catalogue and it compares raw value against real graded sold prices, which is exactly the spread described above — free while in open beta.