Set up the inspection
Bright, even, indirect light. A black background. A 10x loupe or jeweler magnifier. A phone camera with the macro mode enabled. Photograph the card front and back, then zoom to 200% on your phone and look at each corner, edge, and surface area in turn. Most defects that a grader will catch are visible in a well-shot macro photo.
Centering
Measure the borders. On the front of the card, compare the left border to the right border, and the top border to the bottom border. PSA standard for a 10 is roughly 55/45 or better. CGC is slightly tighter. A card with 60/40 centering will not get a 10 from any grader and is best submitted at a lower expectation.
For Wizards-era cards, centering is the single most common grade-killer. Print sheets shifted during production and many cards have factory centering issues that no amount of careful handling can fix. Sort your candidates by centering first.
Corners and edges
Under the loupe, all four corners should be sharp, square, and free of whitening. White spots at corners (even pinpoint ones) drop the grade. The back-side corners count too; many submitters check the front and miss back-side wear.
Edges are evaluated under raking light. Tilt the card slightly toward the light source and look for nicks, whitening, or roughness along the edge. For holos, look for any foil-paint chipping along the edge of the holo window.
Surface
Hold the card at 45 degrees under a strong light and rotate it slowly. Any scratches, indentations, or print defects will catch the light at certain angles. The holo window on a holo rare gets the most scrutiny: even a single scratch visible under raking light will typically drop the grade to a 9 at best.
Print defects (small color dots, missing ink specks, holo line interruptions) are evaluated as surface flaws. Some are factory artifacts; graders are not lenient about them.
The honest grade test
After you have inspected, write down your honest predicted grade. Then look at PSA pop report for the card. If the pop is 1000+ at PSA 10 for the card, your candidate needs to be visibly perfect. If the pop is under 50 at PSA 10, even a strong PSA 9 is meaningful for a serious collector and may justify a submission for the pop-relative scarcity.
What to submit and what to leave raw
- PSA 10 candidate at $500+ PSA 10 value: submit.
- Borderline 9/10 at $1000+ PSA 10 value: submit (the 10 upside justifies the 9 outcome).
- Borderline 9/10 at $100 PSA 10 value: leave raw.
- Sub-9 candidate at any value: leave raw or sell raw.
The fee structure means submission only makes sense when the upgrade tier delta exceeds the submission cost by a comfortable margin. Calculate it card by card.