Is it worth grading?
A free calculator that answers whether paying to grade a sports card is worth it. Enter what the card sells for raw and what it sells for in PSA 8, PSA 9 and PSA 10, along with the grading fee, shipping and selling fees. It returns the lowest grade at which grading beats simply selling the card raw today, and the price a graded copy must reach to break even.
It shows losing outcomes as well as winning ones: a PSA 8 frequently sells for less than the raw card once fees are paid. When no grade covers the cost, it says so.
No account required. Values are estimates from public sold-listing data, not appraisals or investment advice.
How to work out whether a card is worth grading
- Find what the card sells for raw
Search the card on eBay and filter to Sold items. The raw price is what ungraded copies actually closed at, not what sellers are asking.
- Find what it sells for in PSA 8, 9 and 10
Search the same card with the grade in the query and filter to Sold items again. Each grade is its own market; a PSA 10 can be many times a PSA 9.
- Enter your real costs
The grading fee for the tier you'd actually use, shipping both ways, and the percentage the marketplace takes when the card sells.
- Read the break-even grade
The calculator returns the lowest grade at which grading beats selling raw today, and the price a graded copy has to reach to cover the costs. If no grade clears it, it says so.
Questions about grading ROI
Is it worth grading my card?
It's worth grading when the graded copy sells for enough more than the raw copy to cover the grading fee, shipping both ways, and the marketplace's cut, at a grade you can realistically expect. For most cards it doesn't: the fees alone are more than the card. Grading pays on the cards that are already worth real money, or where the PSA 10 price is a large multiple of raw.
Is it worth grading a $50 card?
Usually not. At a $50 raw value, the $79.99 entry fee plus $35 of round-trip shipping and a 13% selling fee means the graded copy has to sell for $182.17 just to leave you where selling it raw would have, more than three and a half times the raw price. A PSA 8 almost never clears that, so it comes down to whether you'll get a 9 or a 10. Put your own numbers in above rather than trusting the rule of thumb; the multiple varies enormously by card.
How do I calculate the grading break-even?
Start from what selling the card raw nets you after fees. Then add the grading fee and shipping to that, and divide by one minus the selling-fee percentage. That's the price a graded copy has to reach to leave you no worse off. Compare it to the real sold prices for PSA 8, 9 and 10. The calculator above does exactly this and shows the number for each grade.
Does a PSA 8 sell for more than a raw card?
Often it doesn't, once you've paid to get it. A PSA 8 is a visibly imperfect card in a slab, and for modern cards buyers frequently pay little or no premium over raw for one. That's why the table above shows PSA 8 for free and marks losing outcomes plainly: an 8 is a common result, and a calculator that only showed the winning grades would be lying by omission.
What does PSA grading cost?
PSA prices by tier, and the tier is set by the card's declared value, so there is no single number. The default fee above is the cheapest tier PSA currently has open, read from the same fee table the app uses, plus round-trip shipping, and every figure is editable. Check PSA's current pricing before you commit: tiers move, and PSA paused its cheapest tiers in June 2026, which moved the entry point up. Shipping both ways and insurance are real costs and belong in the math.
Should I grade with PSA, SGC or BGS?
This calculator is grader-agnostic: enter the fee that grader charges and the prices that grader's slabs actually sell for. That second part is what decides it. PSA slabs generally carry the deepest resale market for modern sports cards, but for some vintage and some niches SGC sells comparably or better, so look up sold listings for the specific card in each holder rather than assuming.
Is this calculator free?
Yes, and it needs no account. The math runs in your browser and nothing you type is stored. Optionally searching for a card fills the three price fields from recent sold listings; every field stays editable.
The calculator is free and needs no account. The arithmetic runs in the browser.
Costs it accounts for: the grading fee, shipping both ways, and the marketplace's selling percentage. All three are editable. The default grading fee is the cheapest tier PSA currently has open, read from the same fee table the app uses, so it moves when PSA's pricing does.