Which cards are worth sending to a grader, and which should you sell raw?

Is it worth grading? Which of these cards should you send, and which should you sell raw?

Grading fees, shipping and weeks of waiting eat the premium on most cards. Paste your cards with what each would sell for raw and at each grade, and your own chance of each grade, and get the expected net from grading against selling raw, the cheapest fee tier that covers each card, the exact chance of a 10 each card needs to be worth sending, the downside, and — if you have a budget or a card limit per submission — the exact best subset to send.

Your estimates, not a price guide and not a forecast. This page knows no card prices and predicts no grades: every value, chance, fee and turnaround is a number you type. For Pokemon, baseball, basketball, football and Magic sellers and collectors using PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC or any grader. Nothing is uploaded: the text boxes are analysed in this browser and never leave your device.

1. Paste your cards

One row per card: name, raw value, value if grade 10, value if 9, value if 8, value if 7 or lower, your chance of 10, of 9, of 8 (the rest is 7 or lower), optional note. Or put sharp, clean, fair or worn in the first chance cell for an illustrative guess. Up to 120 cards.

2. Your grader's fee tiers

One row per tier: name, fee per card, max declared value (or none), turnaround days. The pre-filled table is an example, not a current price list. Replace it with the numbers from the grader's own site.

Shipping and insurance per card ($) Marketplace fee (%) Fixed fee per sale ($) Your annual discount rate (%)

Grading budget cap, fees plus shipping ($, blank for none) Max cards in this submission (blank for none) Condition guess for rows with no chances

3. The submission

Send to the grader (best first)

#	Card	Tier	Fee + shipping	Expected net graded	Net selling raw	Expected gain	Needs a 10 chance of	You said	Chance worse than raw	Worst case vs raw

Sell raw or hold

Card	Why	Expected gain from grading	Needs a 10 chance of	You said

Against simple rules

Rule	Cards	Grading spend	Expected gain over raw

Nothing here is a prediction. Expected net is your own numbers multiplied out; any single card can come back at a grade you did not expect.

Prefer a CLI?

Same logic, zero dependencies, one command — reads a file or stdin:

node cli.mjs pick cards.csv --budget 400 --max-cards 20 --ship 8
cat cards.csv | node cli.mjs pick - --tiers my-tiers.csv --json

Get cli.mjs and engine.mjs — Node 18+, nothing to install, no network call. More: Is it worth grading a card? The break-even math.

What's recognised

Input	Handling

The answer is exact for the numbers you type (exact subset search under a budget or card limit, closed-form break-even). It does not know card prices, population reports, grader policies, pricing changes while your cards are away, loss or damage in transit, or what a slab will really sell for. A grading company's own rules about declared value, card types it accepts and turnaround come first.

Common questions

Is this a price guide or a grade predictor?

No. Every card value, grade chance, grading fee and turnaround in the answer is a number you typed or an illustrative example you were told to replace. It does not look up prices, read a population report or judge a card from a photo. It does the arithmetic on your own estimates and shows you which cards need a better estimate.

Does it upload my card list?

No. The browser page works on the text you paste, in your own browser, and never sends it anywhere. The CLI reads a local file or stdin and makes no network call.

How does it choose which cards to send?

For each card it takes the cheapest fee tier whose declared-value limit covers the card's best case, then weighs what the card would sell for at each grade by your chance of that grade, subtracts the grading fee and shipping, discounts the wait, and compares that with selling the card raw today. Cards that beat raw are the candidates; if you set a budget or a cards-per-submission limit it finds the exact best subset rather than ranking and cutting off.

What is the break-even chance of a 10?

The chance of a gem-grade result at which grading and selling raw have the same expected net, holding your other grade chances fixed. It is solved exactly from the arithmetic, not searched for. Compare it with your own honest estimate: a card that needs 40 percent and that you rate at 10 percent is a pass.

Are the fee tiers current?

No. The built-in fee table is an example so the page works on first load. Graders change fees, declared-value limits and turnaround often. Copy the numbers from the grader's current price list into the table before you rely on the answer.

Which cards and graders does it cover?

Any card where you can estimate a raw value and a value at each grade: Pokemon, baseball, basketball, football, Magic: The Gathering and others, for PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC or any grader whose fees you enter.