PSA grading on rip sites, explained

Every rip site talks about cards, but not every site is handing you the same thing. The difference comes down to grading, and it changes both what your pull is worth and how sure you can be that it is real.

What a grade actually is

A graded card has been sent to a third-party company, checked for authenticity and condition, given a number from 1 to 10, and sealed in a tamper-evident case. PSA is the most recognised of these graders for Pokémon. A PSA 10 is not just a nice card, it is a card whose condition has been verified and locked in by someone with no stake in the sale.

A raw card is ungraded. It might be mint, it might be played, and you are trusting the site's own description. A mixed catalogue is exactly what it sounds like: some cards graded, some not.

Why it changes the value

Grading sets the price. The same card can be worth a few pounds raw and many times that as a PSA 10. When a site ships you a graded slab, the market value it quoted is anchored to something real and checkable. When it ships you a raw card, the value is softer, and the resale is on you.

It also protects you. A sealed, graded slab is hard to fake and easy to verify. It is the closest thing to a guarantee that the card in your hands is the card you were promised.

How we weight it

We score an all-graded site above a mixed one, and a mixed one above raw. For a collector chasing value, all-PSA is the safer ground, which is why the sites that grade everything sit higher in our rankings.