Grading is the hobby’s most expensive habit and its most misunderstood. Done on the right card it can multiply what the card is worth. Done on the wrong one it turns a $40 card into a $40 card in a $20 case, four months later. Here’s how to tell the difference, and how to do it from Miami without mailing anything yourself.
When grading is worth it
Two conditions, both required:
- The card is valuable raw. Grading fees start around $17 a card at the cheapest open tier and run to hundreds for fast service. A card worth $20 raw can’t justify it whatever grade it gets.
- It looks Near Mint or better under a loupe. Centering, corners, edges, surface. Print lines, whitening on a corner, a faint scratch across a holo — any of those makes a 10 impossible and probably a 9. The gap between a 9 and a 10 on a modern chase card is often two to five times the price.
A third condition helps: the card is one people buy graded. Vintage Pokémon, alternate-art chase cards, sealed-era Yu-Gi-Oh!, Reserved List Magic. Playable Commander staples are rarely bought in slabs.
The four graders, compared
Prices and turnarounds as published on each company’s site on September 2, 2026. They change; the cheap tiers in particular open and close with backlog.
| Grader | Cheapest open tier | Turnaround | Best for | Watch out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | $79.99 (Regular; Value tiers paused since June) | 70–80 business days | Resale premium; vintage; anything you’ll sell | Backlog near 10 million cards; bulk pricing needs a $150K/year dealer |
| CGC Cards | $17 Bulk (25-card minimum) · $20 Economy | 150 days · 90 days | Value on volume; modern chase cards | Slightly lower resale premium than PSA on vintage |
| TAG | $149 Priority (regular tiers paused) | 5 business days | Consistency — machine-graded with a report | Newest; smallest resale market so far |
| Beckett (BGS) | $79.95 Express (Base/Standard paused to mid-Sept) | 15 business days | Subgrades; black-label 10s | Slowest and most variable when cheap tiers reopen |
The pattern in 2026: the cheap, slow tiers are paused almost everywhere because the backlogs got too big. If you want a card graded affordably this season, CGC’s bulk and economy tiers are the open door, and the wait is measured in months.
Which grader for which card
- You’ll sell it: PSA. Buyers pay the most for the red label, especially on vintage Pokémon and Magic.
- You’ve got a stack of modern hits: CGC bulk. Twenty-five cards at $17 each, with a max declared value of $500 a card, is the best per-card math in the hobby right now.
- You want the grade to be defensible: TAG. The machine grades every card the same way and gives you a report showing why.
- You want subgrades or a black label: Beckett. A BGS 10 with all four subgrades at 10 is its own market.
- It’s for your own shelf: whichever is cheapest and open. Nobody’s checking the label on your wall.
How to submit from Miami
You can submit directly to any of them — make an account, pack the cards in penny sleeves inside semi-rigid Card Savers, declare a value, insure the shipment, and wait. Or submit through a shop that does group submissions, which is what GH Games does from the counter:
- We look first. Under the loupe, on your side of the counter. If the card won’t grade well, we say so before you spend anything.
- We pick the tier with you. Which grader, which speed, what declared value.
- We pack and ship it, insured, with the batch. Card Savers, photographed front and back, on a receipt that lists every card.
- We text you when the slabs are back.
The cost is the grader’s fee plus $5 a card for handling and insured shipping both ways. No account to make, no packing, no trip to the post office, and the cards travel with a dealer’s shipment rather than alone. Details in the grading questions.
Before you pay anyone
Look at the card under magnification, in daylight, front and back. Check that the border is even on all four sides. Run a light across the holo at an angle and look for scratches. If you find one, keep the card raw and enjoy it — grading doesn’t fix anything; it just makes it official.