What follows are the standards I use to grade my trading and tobacco cards, postcards and other vintage paper ephemera. When it comes to a grade every card is unique but the following text descriptions best describe how I generally will grade.
Following this text Grading Guide is a Grading Guide Gallery displaying several examples of what is described along with some outlier type cards which you may have otherwise found difficult to grade.
Feel free to use my Grading Guide to help in grading your own cards and collectibles as well.
Trading Card Grading Guide
MT (Mint) or 10/10: Right off the press and printed perfectly (including centering). No flaws whatsoever.
NM-MT (Near Mint to Mint) or 9/10: Very nearly perfect yet you know there's something holding it back. If perfection were common we'd have different standards and so the NM-MT to card is almost there but maybe there's a tiny dink at a corner tip; a tiny print dot; it's very slightly, almost imperceptibly off-center. Again, nearly perfect.
NM (Near Mint) or 8/10: Extremely strong grade. 60-40 centering or better. A minor, yet slightly worse defect than the NM-MT card; such as one of the following: Slight stronger versions of the defects above (print spots or lines). Two or three corners a little touched by wear or 3 sharp corners and 1 a little heavier dinged than it would be in the grade above.
EX-MT (Excellent to Mint) or 7/10: Still high-grade. 70-30 centering or better. A couple of the minor flaws of the NM card allowed rather than just one. Still no creasing or even any wrinkling.
EX+ (Excellent Plus) or 6/10: More mid-grade than high-grade at this point. Light wear (though not rounding) at 3 of the corners; off-center; print marks; maybe a couple of specks of soiling. Light visible wear at edges. Still a very nice card with no creasing or wrinkling.
EX (Excellent) or 5/10: 75-25 centering or better. All corners may have a little wear (though not rounding), the edges may show some wear. Still NO creases whatsoever allowed. The numerical grade is 5 out of 10, so think of it this way: not too bad, not too good.
VG-EX (Very Good to Excellent) or 4.5/10: All bets are off on centering, though anything approaching 90-10 or worse should be mentioned after the grade. The corners may show some more wear, one of them may even be rounded. Slight edge wear. Faint soiling or toning. This grade exists for those cards lying somewhere between VG and EX. If you can't decide one way or another it's a good bet your grade lies here. May show faint corner indents.
VG (Very Good) or 4/10: All corners may be rounded, all edges may be rough, but still no true creases that break the paper. I allow for a single surface crease or wrinkle at this grade--short and light, no immediately recognizable with the naked eye. Faint age toning; soiling but not in overwhelming quantity. More recognizable corner indents possible as well.
G-VG (Good to Very Good) or 3.5/10: Now we're getting beat-up. Rounded corners, rough edges, poor centering, printing defects, either a multiple (though not overwhelming number) or surface creasing or a maximum of one short but true crease in the card. Some soiling; toning.
G (Good) or 3/10: Same as G-VG above but now multiple true creases (those which go through both sides of the card) are allowed. Still, not an overwhelming amount of creasing, nothing that's seen time on the bicycle spokes for instance. Rounded corners; deeper soiling; surface scuffs.
F-G (Fair to Good) or 2.5/10: Items that have seen time in the bicycle spokes are allowed here. This is a beat-up ugly card only worth having if you have to have it or are selecting it a a filler meant for later upgrade. Multiple heavy creases; slight back damage.
F (Fair) or 2/10: Take a nice MINT card or photo, crumple it up in you hand, use some sandpaper on the corners and edges, but allow it to come out of this intact...that's fair (and please don't do that to any collectibles!). Heavier back damage.
P-F (Poor to Fair) or 1.5/10: About as bad as you can get just falling short of missing pieces or other disfigurement such as deep scribbling.
P (Poor) or 1/10: Anything goes! The worst you can get. We're talking defaced cards; missing pieces; whatever.
Grading Gallery
Several examples follow of the various grades described above. Over time I will add more examples to this grading gallery to prove the rule that there are always exceptions and no two cards are alike!
Click any photo to enlarge--from there you can scroll through the entire collection enlarged at one time. Just use the arrows (<< and >>) at the bottom of the descriptions to scroll through. Enjoy!
A NM-MT or 9/10 card -- Personally I don't believe in perfection, so I'll never go 10 of 10, but this NM-MT 1935 Gallaher card is pretty close to perfect!
An EX-MT or 7/10 card. Note the thicker left border as compared to right border. This would be off-center 70-30 left to right. Additionally there is some minor edge wear to this card that can be better seen on back in the next image of this gallery.
Back of our EX-MT or 7/10 card -- note the fuzziness along the right edge.
This EX-MT or 7/10 card just has touches of wear at the corner tips. The corners will look slightly worse on the following image of the reverse, but this is still an overall high quality card.
Reverse side of the EX-MT Hayakawa card. Very nice, just note the corner tips which keep it from grading even higher.
An EX+ or 6/10 card. Look at the corners, especially the bottom corners on this example. This card actually looks a little better from the front, our next gallery image shows the back of the same card.
Back of our EX+ or 6/10 card. The corner wear is more evident from this side and you can also see slightly stronger wear along the top edge than compared to say the right edge on back of our EX-MT example.
This Garbo card is a pretty sharp EX+ or 6/10 but look at the top edge. Rough along that top edge, otherwise a NM card.
Reverse side of the EX+ Garbo which also only shows defect along the top edge.
EX or 5/10. There's a bit of wear at each of the four corners on this card. Also some faint soiling evident over the white borders.
This EX of 5/10 card is overall sharp--even still has the gold gilt on its edges--but time has not been kind in other ways. The background should be white but the card has a moderate overall toning resulting in a yellowish-brown color. Also a couple of specks of soiling on front.
Another overall sharp EX or 5/10 card but it is off-center about 75-25 right to left, has some small spots of soiling at the bottom left corner and a slight overall curl to the card.
VG-EX or 4.5/10. Notice how the corners on our VG-EX example better resemble the term "rounded" than had our previous, higher grading examples.
These oval cards can be a bit harder to grade sometimes, but not this VG-EX or 4.5/10 example. Just look along the right edge and you'll see the ripple of edge wear (not a crease or even a wrinkle) that's causing the grade.
I've included this VG-EX or 4.5/10 example to show a perfect example of corner indents. They'll be better seen in the next scan showing the back of the card, but as for the front you can see the indent very well at the top left corner.
On back of this VG-EX example you can see light diagonal indents near each of the four corners. These are not creases or even wrinkles. Just pressurized indentations into the surface of the card.
Here's a good solid VG or 4/10 card: Corners are rounded and there's even a hint of a wrinkle near the tip of the top left corner. Also there's some soiling on back which is shown in the next scan of the gallery.
The reverse side of our VG or 4/10 example. Now this scan is supersized so the dark soiling on the white surface looks a little worse than it actually is, but you can also spot a separate spot of soiling towards the middle of the card and better see the corner wear.
Some wear around the edges of this colorful game card, but what lowers it to VG or 4/10 is the diagonal surface crease you'll spot near the top left corner.
G-VG or 3.5/10. We've got a short, but hard, diagonal crease near the bottom right corner on our G-VG card. Also, if you move your eyes up from that bottom corner, some wear along the right edge.
A good example of G-VG or 3.5/10 card without any creasing. The rounded corners and soiling at the left edge would make this a VG to VG-EX card if the back was nice ...
.. but the back of the Pickford card drags it down to G-VG or 3.5/10 as it has a light overall age toning along with some spots of soiling or perhaps even darker toning.
G-VG or 3.5/10 card just has some wear around the corners but then a pair of light diagonal creases near the bottom left corner. These are not surface creases, but true creases that show on both sides of the card.
Reverse side of the G-VG or 3.5/10 card. Since we've turned the card over those light creases that had been at the bottom left on front now show at the bottom right on back. Really a nice card for a technically G-VG low-grade example.
G or 3/10. Actually, this card looks a lot better than our grade of G or 3/10 but you'll better see the flaws on the reverse side in the next image of our gallery. That top left corner does look pretty worn here though.
Reverse side of our G or 3/10 example makes the creasing more evident at the top right--this actually isn't a surface crease, it is visible on front as well but the scan did not pick it up. Soiling is obvious in the center with some light spots of age toning along the left edge.
G or 3/10 card with rounded corners, edge wear as shown and creasing, most noticeably up near the top right corner.
This G or 3/10 card looks a lot nicer on front. Perhaps EX or even EX+ with just some hints of toning. The following scan better explains the grade.
Our G or 3/10 Novarro card viewed from the back. As you can see heavy spots of age toning are what weigh this card down.
This oversized card was a very tough grade at G or 3/10. It is an EX or better card in all ways, except, look at the left edge. See how the very edge is yellow in comparison to the white border area? This is surface chipping all down that edge which means that in the end a G or 3/10 grade would be on the high side if anything.
F-G or 2.5/10. Looks can be deceiving, though we do see some light creasing at the top right on this low grade example, most of the punishing grade comes from what we'll see in the next image, on back.
Reverse of our F-G or 2.5/10 example shows surface damage on back. Also overall age toning and the creasing from the front is more evident. Never buy a card without seeing both sides!
F or 2/10. Yet another example where the front appears much better than the grade. This appears to be a VG-EX card with just some corner wear at light soiling at the bottom right, but turn it over ...
... turning it over and seeing the glue residue makes our F or 2/10 grade generous at best. Again, be sure to see both sides of the card whenever possible
