Is it worth grading?
Pick a card. We pull what a PSA 10 and a PSA 9 actually sell for, set it against what the raw card is worth today, subtract the real grading fee, the shipping and eBay's cut — and tell you whether you'd come out ahead.
Most calculators still quote PSA's $24.99 Value tier. That tier has been suspended since 2 June 2026. At the $79.99 you actually have to pay, the honest answer for a lot of modern cards is “don't.”
Pick a card to see whether grading it pays.
What each outcome pays
Net figures are after the marketplace fee and after the $84.99 it costs to grade and ship the card — a cost you pay whatever grade comes back.
Graded comps from PriceCharting. Raw prices from TCGplayer market data. Grading and marketplace fees checked 2026-07-12; graders change them often. The odds of each grade are your estimate, not measured data — no public per-card gem-rate feed exists, and the defaults (35% gem) are a prior for modern chase cards, which gem far below the bulk-inflated headline rates.
What grading actually costs right now
Checked against each grader's own pricing page on 2026-07-12. They move these often — PSA raised prices in February 2026 and paused half its lineup in June.
PSA
| Tier | Per card | Max value | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| PSA RegularThe cheapest PSA tier you can actually book right now. | $79.99 | $1,500.00 | 40–50 business days |
| PSA Express | $149.00 | $2,500.00 | 20–30 business days |
| PSA Super Express | $349.00 | $5,000.00 | 7–10 business days |
| PSA Value BulkPausedCollectors Club only, 20-card minimum. Paused since 2026-06-02. | $24.99 | $500.00 | 140–160 business days |
| PSA ValuePausedPaused since 2026-06-02. | $32.99 | $500.00 | 100–120 business days |
| PSA Value MaxPausedPaused since 2026-06-02. | $64.99 | $1,000.00 | 40–50 business days |
CGC & BGS
| Tier | Per card | Max value | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| CGC Bulk | $17.00 | $500.00 | ~120 business days |
| CGC EconomyThe cheapest realistic way to get a card slabbed today. | $20.00 | $1,000.00 | ~65 business days |
| CGC Standard | $55.00 | $3,000.00 | ~10 business days |
| BGS BaseNo subgrades at this tier (subgrades are $17.95). | $14.95 | — | 75+ business days |
| BGS Standard | $34.95 | — | ~45 business days |
CGC and BGS are far cheaper — but a PSA 10 commands a real premium over a CGC 10 or a BGS 9.5 for Pokémon, so the lower fee does not buy you the same resale. The calculator uses each grader's own comps rather than pretending the slabs are interchangeable.
How the number is worked out
Grading is a bet with three outcomes, and you pay the fee on all three. So the comparison isn't “PSA 10 price vs raw price” — it's the probability-weighted take-home across every grade you might get, minus the cost of grading, against what you'd net selling the card raw today.
upside = Σ P(grade) × [ sale(grade) × (1 − 13.25%) − $0.40 ] − fee − shipping
− [ raw × (1 − 13.25%) − $0.40 ]
The weak link is P(grade). No public feed gives a per-card gem rate, so that stays a slider you set — and any calculator that presents a chance-of-a-10 as though it were measured data is making it up.
Grading, answered
How much does it cost to grade a Pokémon card in 2026?+
The cheapest PSA tier you can actually book right now is Regular at $79.99 per card — PSA suspended all four of its Value tiers (from $24.99) on 2 June 2026 under a backlog of roughly 12 million cards. CGC Economy at $20 and BGS Base at $14.95 are still open and are currently the cheapest realistic ways to get a card slabbed. Add around $5 per card of round-trip insured shipping if you send ten at a time, or closer to $38 if you send just one.
Is grading Pokémon cards still worth it?+
For most modern singles under about $150 raw, no. At PSA's current $79.99 Regular fee, a roughly 35% chance of a PSA 10 on a modern chase card, and eBay's 13.25% cut, the expected take-home from grading is often lower than simply selling the card raw. Grading pays when the PSA 10 sells for a large multiple of the raw price — typically vintage, high-end modern chase cards, or cards you are confident will gem.
What percentage of Pokémon cards get a PSA 10?+
There is no reliable per-card figure. GemRate's 2025 aggregate put the TCG gem rate near 50%, but that number is inflated by bulk commons submitted by the hundred. Modern alt arts, special illustration rares and textured holos — the cards people actually consider grading — tend to gem closer to 30% because of soft edges and centering. This calculator defaults to 35% and expects you to move the slider based on your own copy.
Do I make more money selling a card raw or graded?+
It depends entirely on the gap between the raw price and the graded price, and whether that gap is bigger than the grading fee plus shipping plus the marketplace fee on the higher sale price. The calculator on this page computes both take-home figures side by side so you can see the difference rather than guess at it.
Grading one card is a decision. Grading a collection is a spreadsheet — browse the database or scan your cards with the PokeLenz app to see which ones are even close to worth it.