How to Get Baseball Cards Graded

To get a baseball card graded: 1) decide whether the card is worth grading, 2) choose a grading company, 3) fill out a submission form, 4) pack the card securely in a penny sleeve and semi-rigid holder, 5) ship it tracked and insured with a return label, and 6) wait for your grade. With PCG, grading is $1 per card and you only pay to slab the grades you actually want kept.

New to this? Don’t worry — it’s simpler than the grading-company sites make it look. The whole process is six steps, none of them require expert knowledge, and you don’t have to risk much to try it. We’ll walk you through every step the way we’d walk a friend at the card shop through it.

What does it mean to grade a baseball card?

Card grading is a professional assessment of a trading card’s condition on a 1–10 scale, judged on four things: centering, corners, edges, and surface. A grader inspects the card, assigns a score, and seals it in a tamper-evident plastic holder (a “slab”) with a label showing the grade. The slab does two things: it certifies the grade, and it protects the card.

People grade cards for three reasons: to prove condition for resale, to protect a card they care about long term, and to find out what their card actually grades. The big graders’ pricing makes the third reason expensive. That’s the problem PCG was built around — at $1 per card, finding out is the cheap part.

Step 1 — Decide if the card is worth grading

Don’t grade everything. The most common beginner mistake is sending in a stack of cards that, even at the best possible grade, won’t sell for more than the grading and shipping fees. Start by being honest about what you have.

Good candidates for grading:

• Valuable raw. A card that’s already worth real money ungraded has the most to gain from a high grade.
• Rookies, vintage stars, low-pop cards. Hall-of-fame rookies, iconic vintage names, serial-numbered cards, and short prints can justify grading where a base card won’t.
• High condition. Be brutally honest about centering, corners, edges, and surface. Most cards people think are “mint” aren’t.
• Personal significance. A card you want protected in your collection is worth grading even if the math doesn’t favor a flip — especially because the slab itself is what’s protecting it.

Bad candidates:

• Common modern base cards in good-but-not-pristine condition.
• Cards damaged enough that even a perfect grade won’t push them past the grading fee in value.
• Anything you’re not sure is authentic — though the grader will catch fakes, you’ll have spent the fee.

If you’re not sure where a card falls, our full breakdown of the decision is here: Should I grade my baseball card? →. And the answer-of-last-resort: with PCG’s $1 grade, “I don’t know if it’s worth it” has a cheap answer — submit it for a buck and find out.

Step 2 — Choose a grading company

There are five graders worth considering: PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC, and PCG. Each has a different sweet spot.

• PSA carries the deepest secondary-market recognition — a PSA 10 on a flagship card generally moves fastest at the highest prices. Best if you’ve already confirmed a card grades high and you intend to flip it into the open market.
• BGS (Beckett) is known for subgrades and a strong reputation in high-end modern.
• CGC is the TCG specialist (Pokémon, Magic).
• SGC is the vintage specialist.
• PCG is the independent, hobbyist-owned option built for first-timers and collectors who want to know what their cards actually grade without an expensive gamble. Flat $1 per card, pay to slab only the grades you want kept, free return otherwise.

For a first submission, our honest advice: unless you already know your card is a high-grade flagship rookie that you’ll flip immediately, PCG is the lowest-risk place to start. Full side-by-side breakdown: Best card grading company for beginners →.

Step 3 — Fill out the submission form

Every grader has an online form where you tell them what you’re sending — your name, contact info, the cards in your submission (year, set, player, card number, any variation or parallel), and the service level you want.

At the legacy graders, this is also where you set a declared value for each card, which is what drives your grading fee. Declare too low and you may not get adequate insurance; declare too high and the fee jumps. This is one of the steps that makes the legacy model intimidating for beginners.

At PCG there’s no declared-value step. Tell us what you’re sending and click submit. Start a PCG submission →.

Step 4 — Pack your cards safely

This is where a lot of beginners go wrong. A graded card is only as protected in transit as you pack it — and grading companies will not refund you if a card arrives damaged. Pack it like the card matters, because it does.

The standard packing stack, from inside to outside:

1. Penny sleeve. A soft, thin plastic sleeve directly on the card. This prevents the card from rubbing against anything harder. Never tape directly onto a card — the residue can damage the surface.
2. Semi-rigid card holder. A “Card Saver”–style holder. The card-in-penny-sleeve slides into the semi-rigid holder. This is the layer that prevents bending. Do not use a top-loader for cards going to grading — top-loaders can be too tight and put pressure on the corners during temperature changes in transit.
3. Rigid sandwich. Place the semi-rigid holder between two pieces of cardboard or thin plastic so it can’t flex. Tape the sandwich shut around the outside (not the card or sleeves).
4. Mailer or small box. Use a bubble mailer (for one or two cards) or a small cardboard box (for a stack). Add packing material so nothing shifts inside.

A few packing rules people learn the expensive way:

• Never use scotch tape, masking tape, or any tape directly on a card, sleeve, or semi-rigid holder where it touches the card. Residue damages surfaces.
• Don’t overcrowd a top-loader if you’re using one for storage — the squeeze can cause edge whitening.
• Don’t ship in a thin envelope or padded envelope alone. The card needs rigid protection on both faces.
• Don’t bend the mailer to fit your mailbox. If it doesn’t fit, take it to the post office counter.

If you’re shipping a high-value card and you’re nervous about packing it yourself, the card shop you bought from will usually pack it for grading for a few dollars. That’s money well spent on anything you’d be sad to lose.

Step 5 — Ship it tracked and insured

Use a trackable shipping method (USPS Priority Mail, UPS, or FedEx) with insurance for the full value of the card. Save the tracking number. If you’re submitting to PCG, include a prepaid return label in the box — you cover shipping both ways, and the label means your card has a known route home before we ever open the package.

Three quick shipping rules:

• Insure for replacement value, not declared value. If a $200 card is lost, that’s what it costs you to replace.
• Require a signature on delivery if you can. Adds a few dollars; eliminates “I never got it” disputes.
• Don’t ship on a Friday or before a holiday if it can wait — packages sitting in distribution centers over weekends get handled more.

For multiple cards in one submission, weigh the box honestly and pay for the right shipping class. Underestimating weight is the most common reason shipments get held up.

Step 6 — Get your grade and decide

Once your card arrives, the grader logs it, inspects it, and assigns a grade on a 1–10 scale based on centering, corners, edges, and surface. Full grading scale explained →

What happens next depends on the grader:

• At the legacy graders, you’ve already paid your grading fee, so the grade is what it is — the card comes back in a slab regardless of whether you liked the result.
• At PCG, this is where you choose. We report your grade with photo evidence of any flaws that held it under a 10. If you like the grade, $15 for a PCG 10 or $10 for any grade below seals it in a slab. If you don’t, we return everything as received using your prepaid return label — you only paid the $1 to find out.

That’s the whole process. Pack carefully, ship insured, wait for the report. It’s the gamble in the middle that PCG was built to remove.

What should I expect from my first grading submission?

Three things every first-time submitter should know going in:

1. Most cards grade lower than collectors expect. Surface imperfections, slight off-centering, and corner softness are invisible to the casual eye but obvious to a grader under magnification. A card that looks “mint” in your hand is often a 9 or below under inspection. Don’t take a lower-than-hoped grade as a sign you got robbed — take it as new information.
2. Turnaround can be slower than the homepage promises. The cheap tiers at every grader can take months, and even the express tiers have busy seasons.
3. The grading fee is sunk regardless of result. At the legacy graders, you pay full price for whatever grade comes back. At PCG, you pay $1 to find out and slabbing is optional — which is exactly the gamble we built around.

Grade a Card for $1 → · See full pricing → · How it works →