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All three companies seal a card in a tamper-evident plastic holder and assign it a number from 1 to 10. The differences that matter are the wording attached to each number, whether the company breaks the grade into components, and what the top of each scale actually requires.
Here is what each company publishes about its own scale. We have left out fees and turnaround times deliberately — those change constantly and any figure written here would be wrong within months.
PSA is Professional Sports Authenticator, established in 1991 and operating as a division of Collectors Universe. It uses a ten-point scale with a named adjective for each grade.
| Grade | Abbreviation | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | GEM-MT | Gem Mint |
| 9 | MINT | Mint |
| 8 | NM-MT | Near Mint-Mint |
| 7 | NM | Near Mint |
| 6 | EX-MT | Excellent-Mint |
| 5 | EX | Excellent |
| 4 | VG-EX | Very Good-Excellent |
| 3 | VG | Very Good |
| 2 | GOOD | Good |
| 1.5 | FR | Fair |
| 1 | PR | Poor |
PSA awards half grades between 2 and 9 — so 2.5 through 8.5 — with a stated focus on centering when deciding whether a card earns the bump. There is no PSA 9.5. This is a genuine structural quirk: the gap between a PSA 9 and a PSA 10 has nothing in between it.
PSA also publishes centering tolerances per grade, which is unusually specific and worth knowing:
| Grade | Front | Reverse |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Gem Mint | ~55/45 | ~75/25 |
| 9 Mint | ~60/40 | ~90/10 |
| 8 NM-MT | ~65/35 | ~90/10 |
| 7 NM | ~70/30 | ~90/10 |
| 6 EX-MT | 80/20 | 90/10 |
PSA notes that graders may allow small variance based on a card's overall eye appeal. A Gem Mint 10 at PSA is defined as virtually perfect: four sharp corners, sharp focus, full original gloss, free of staining, with an allowance for a slight printing imperfection that does not hurt overall appeal.
PSA does not give component subgrades on trading cards. This surprises people who have seen subgraded slabs. What PSA offers instead is Grader Notes — written detail on defects — included at certain service levels. If someone shows you a subgraded PSA card slab, look again.
Cards that cannot receive a number are labelled Authentic, or Altered Authentic where trimming, recolouring, restoration or cleaning is present. PSA also uses qualifiers on numbered cards: OC (off-centre), PD (print defect), ST (stain), OF (out of focus), MK (marks) and MC (miscut). A qualifier disqualifies a card from half-point consideration.
Every PSA slab carries a certification number on a LightHouse label, and PSA operates a public cert verification lookup. Use it. It is free and it takes seconds.
BGS is Beckett Grading Services, operated by Beckett Collectibles. Its headline structural difference is that it uses half-point increments across the whole 1 to 10 range — so 9.5 and 8.5 both exist — and it is the company built around subgrades.
| Grade | Name |
|---|---|
| 10 | Pristine |
| 9.5 | Gem Mint |
| 9 | Mint |
| 8 | Near Mint |
| 7 | Near Mint |
| 6 | Excellent Mint |
| 5 | Excellent |
| 4 | Very Good |
| 3 | Very Good |
| 2 | Good |
| 1 | Poor |
Note that Beckett's published chart genuinely repeats "Near Mint" at 8 and 7, and "Very Good" at 4 and 3. That is not a transcription error on our part.
BGS assesses Centering, Corners, Edges and Surface, front and back, and prints all four on the label alongside the overall grade. This is the reason people submit to BGS: you get a diagnostic, not just a verdict.
An important honesty point here, because a great deal of internet writing gets it wrong. Beckett does not publish a formula linking subgrades to the overall grade. There is no published averaging rule, no published lowest-subgrade cap, and no weighting table. Beckett's own wording is that the four categories are considered in determining the final grade. Anyone telling you the overall is the average, or is capped by the weakest subgrade, is describing a community theory rather than a published standard.
Subgrades are optional — Beckett offers a single-grade service without them. Cards produced before 1980 do not receive the subgrade report card.
So a Pristine 10 with even one 9.5 subgrade gets gold, not black. Beckett's published Pristine 10 centering requirement is 50/50 all around on the front and 55/45 or better on the back.
CGC Cards is Certified Guaranty Company, sharing ownership and senior management with NGC (coins), PMG (paper money) and CGC Comics. CGC Cards is the result of CGC Trading Cards and CSG combining into a single brand.
CGC uses half grades from 1.5 up to 9.5, and then splits the top into two distinct tens:
The full ladder below Gem Mint 10 runs Mint+ 9.5, Mint 9, NM/Mint+ 8.5, NM/Mint 8, Near Mint+ 7.5, Near Mint 7, Ex/NM+ 6.5, Ex/NM 6, Excellent+ 5.5, Excellent 5, VG/Ex+ 4.5, VG/Ex 4, Very Good+ 3.5, Very Good 3, Good+ 2.5, Good 2, Fair 1.5, Poor 1. Non-numeric designations are Authentic, Authentic Altered and Authentic ART.
CGC no longer offers subgrades. The company states this plainly. Older CGC and CSG slabs in the market do carry them, so you will still encounter subgraded CGC cards — they are legacy holders.
The CGC Perfect 10 — a Pristine 10 with four 10 subgrades — is a retired grade. Cards that hold it retain the designation. Similarly, legacy CGC Trading Cards and CSG "Gem Mint 9.5" grades map to today's CGC Cards Gem Mint 10. If you are buying older CGC slabs, read the legacy grade key rather than assuming the label means what the current scale means.
CGC images every card after encapsulation and those images are available through its cert lookup, with a QR code on the label reverse. That imaging is a meaningful buyer protection when you are purchasing a slab remotely.
| PSA | BGS | CGC | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Half grades | 2 to 9, no 9.5 | Throughout 1–10 | 1.5 to 9.5 |
| Subgrades | No | Yes, four, optional | Discontinued |
| Top grade name | Gem Mint 10 | Pristine 10 | Pristine 10 |
| Second tier at top | Mint 9 | Gem Mint 9.5 | Gem Mint 10 |
| Cert lookup | Yes | Yes | Yes, with images |
The single most useful takeaway: a "10" does not mean the same thing across the three companies. A BGS 9.5 Gem Mint and a CGC Gem Mint 10 and a PSA 10 Gem Mint are three different standards wearing similar names. When you are comparing two slabbed copies of the same card, compare the standards, not the digits.
If you want to understand what graders are actually looking at before you pick a company, our Pokémon card condition guide covers centering, corners, edges and surface in the raw. Graded and raw stock both turn up in our vintage Pokémon and Charizard ranges, and we assess condition at intake on every card we buy.
There is no defensible answer, because the companies publish their standards differently and do not grade to a shared rubric. What you can compare is published criteria: PSA and CGC both publish centering tolerances per grade, while Beckett publishes them only for Pristine 10. Compare the written standards rather than relying on reputation.
No. They are separate scales with separate top tiers. BGS 9.5 is Gem Mint with Pristine 10 above it; PSA 10 is Gem Mint with nothing above it and no 9.5 beneath it. Treating them as equivalent is one of the most common mistakes in the hobby.
Because it is a legacy holder. CGC and the former CSG did offer subgrades historically and discontinued them. Older slabs retain what was printed at the time, and CGC publishes a legacy grade key explaining how retired grades map to the current scale.
It is a Pristine 10 overall where all four subgrades — centering, corners, edges and surface — are also 10. A Pristine 10 with any 9.5 subgrade receives the gold label instead. The black label is a subgrade combination, not a separate grade.
Yes, and you should. All three companies operate public certification lookups keyed to the number on the label. CGC additionally publishes its own post-encapsulation photograph of the card, which lets you confirm the slab in front of you matches the record.
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