The single most common thing people search about card grading is not how grading works. It is what a grade looks like.
Forty three different queries reach this site asking to see a grade. "psa 7 example", "what does a psa 8 look like", "psa 1-10 examples". Together they are 14,512 impressions a year at an average position of 8.7. Every one of them lands on a post made of words.
Words are the wrong format for this question. You cannot describe a corner. So this page is the index, each grade gets its own page with photographs, and I am going to be straight with you about which photographs exist yet.
The scale, in one table
| Grade | Name | The short version |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | Gem Mint | Nothing wrong that anyone can find |
| 9 | Mint | One tiny thing, usually centering or a single soft corner |
| 8 | NM-MT | Minor wear you need to look for |
| 7 | NM | Light wear you can see without looking for it |
| 6 | EX-MT | Obvious handling, possibly a light crease |
| 5 | EX | Rounded corners, real edge wear |
| 4 | VG-EX | Multiple flaws, creasing |
| 3 | VG | Heavy creases, rounding, clear damage |
| 2 | Good | Significant damage, card intact |
| 1 | Poor | Severe damage, tears, missing pieces |
The thing that surprises everyone
The gap between a 10 and a 7 is smaller than you think, and the gap between a 7 and a 4 is enormous.
Grades 10 through 8 are decided by defects you often need magnification and raking light to find. PSA's own Joe Orlando wrote about corner flips being "responsible for more otherwise NM-MT or Mint cards dropping to a grade of PSA NM 7", and a corner flip is a defect you can hold in your hand and never notice.
From 6 downward the flaws are obvious across a room. Creases, rounded corners, missing surface.
This matters practically. If you are looking at a card and can immediately see what is wrong with it, you are not in a 10 versus 9 conversation. You are somewhere at 6 or below, and the expensive grading tiers make no sense.
Each grade, in detail
Individual pages, one per grade, with photographs where I have the card to photograph.
- PSA 10 examples, and what disqualifies a card from Gem Mint
- PSA 9 examples, the grade most "perfect" cards actually get
- PSA 8 examples, where flaws become findable without a loupe
- PSA 7 examples, the most searched grade and the least illustrated
What separates each grade from the one above
This is the part that actually answers the question, so here it is in one place.
10 to 9. One thing. Centering slightly past tolerance, or one corner that is very slightly soft under magnification, or a single faint surface line. A 9 is not a flawed card. It is a card with exactly one findable thing.
9 to 8. The flaw stops needing magnification. A whitened corner tip you can see at reading distance, or centering that is visibly off, or a scratch you catch when you tilt the card.
8 to 7. More than one flaw, or one flaw that is clearly visible. Light corner fraying on multiple corners, edge whitening along one side, surface scratching that shows in normal light.
7 to 6. Something structural. A light crease, a dent, a corner that has gone from worn to rounded. This is where the card stops looking like a good copy and starts looking like a used one.
6 to 5 and below. Accumulation. Multiple creases, all four corners rounded, surface loss, edge damage on every side. Below a 4 the card is being graded on whether it is complete rather than how it looks.
What I can and cannot show you
Here is the honest inventory.
I own three graded cards, bought specifically to study for the AI grading estimator project: a PSA 10, a PSA 9, and a PSA 8. Those three I can photograph properly, at the same magnification, under the same light, which is the only way a comparison means anything.
I do not own a PSA 7, and I do not own anything below it.
That leaves me three options, and I am telling you which one I picked. I could photograph nothing and describe grades in prose, which is what every guide already does and what is failing these searches. I could use images from PSA's own listings or auction sites, which I do not have the rights to reproduce. Or I could show you the three cards I actually have and be explicit about the gap.
I picked the third. The PSA 7 page will say it is waiting on a card until I own one.
Why "example" searches go unanswered
A thought about why this gap exists at all.
Photographing graded cards well is genuinely hard. The slab is reflective, the defects are sub-millimetre, and raking light that reveals a scratch also blows out the holo. Most guides skip the photos because photos are work and prose is not.
The result is that the highest-volume question in the hobby is answered almost entirely by people who have never held the grade they are describing. Including, until I shoot these three cards, me.
That is the argument for doing it properly rather than quickly. There is no shortage of pages describing a PSA 7. There is a shortage of pages showing one.
Sources
- PSA grading standards. Checked 10 August 2026.
- Joe Orlando, "Taking My Hacks: A Few More Grading Tips", PSA, 6 May 2008.
- Search query data is my own, from Google Search Console for coffeeandfun.com, 9 April 2025 to 8 August 2026.