The DCM Grading Standard
Version 1.0 · Effective 26 August 2026 · Engine DCM_Grading_v9.19
Published by Dynamic Collectibles Management LLC.
1. What this document is
This is the standard DCM grades to. It is our own, it is published here in full, and it is versioned, so that any grade we issue can be checked against the rules that produced it.
It is written to be precise enough that a reader who understands it can predict what DCM will do with a given card. If you can read this document and still not know why a card scored what it scored, that is a defect in the document and we want to hear about it.
Calibration
We calibrate this standard against the published grading criteria of PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC. Where their public rubrics define a condition, our ladder rows are written to land in the same place.
We do not claim a DCM grade will equal the grade one of those companies would assign. They do not publish their internal thresholds, their graders apply judgment we cannot observe, and any two of them routinely disagree with each other about the same card. Claiming equivalence to something unpublished would not be a standard, it would be a guess with a brand name attached.
What we do claim is narrower and testable: our criteria are public, our grades follow from them, and both are versioned so a change is visible.
2. The scale
Whole numbers, 1 through 10. No decimals, no half grades.
| Grade | Name | Profile |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | Gem Mint | No confirmed handling defects. Minor manufacturing variance is acceptable. |
| 9 | Mint | One to three minor defects, visible only on close inspection. |
| 8 | Near Mint-Mint | One moderate defect, or several minor defects across categories. |
| 7 | Near Mint | Multiple moderate defects. |
| 6 | Excellent-Mint | Widespread moderate wear, or one isolated heavy defect. |
| 5 | Excellent | Heavy wear beginning to dominate. |
| 4 | Very Good-Excellent | Clear structural or heavy surface damage. |
| 3 | Very Good | Heavy rounding, tearing, or severe whitening. |
| 2 | Good | Severe damage or material loss. |
| 1 | Poor | Destroyed, missing pieces, or miscut beyond recognition. |
A 10 requires genuine scrutiny. Most cards show at least minor wear.
3. The four categories
Every card is scored in four categories: Centering, Corners, Edges, and Surface. Each is scored 1 to 10 on the front and on the back independently.
A category's score is the lower of its two faces. A card with pristine front corners and a chipped back corner does not average to something comfortable. It takes the back corner's score.
4. How each category is scored
4.1 The visibility test
Every category except Centering is scored by how noticeable a defect is, not by invented millimetre measurements. Three bands:
- Close inspection only. You have to look for it, at an angle or magnified.
- Noticeable at normal viewing distance. Someone holding the card sees it without hunting.
- Obvious. It is the first thing you see.
Severity describes visibility. It does not carry its own deduction. Scores come from the ladders below and nowhere else.
4.2 Centering
Centering is the one category that is measured, not judged. The two opposing border widths are compared and a ratio computed. If a ratio was not derived from two measured widths, it is not a measurement, and the axis is reported as not measurable rather than estimated.
| Ratio (worse axis, front) | Score |
|---|---|
| 55/45 or better | 10 |
| 56/44 to 60/40 | 9 |
| 61/39 to 65/35 | 8 |
| 66/34 to 70/30 | 7 |
| 71/29 to 80/20 | 6 |
| 81/19 to 85/15 | 5 |
| 86/14 to 90/10 | 4 |
| 91/9 to 95/5 | 3 |
| Worse than 95/5 | 2 |
| Miscut | 1 |
Back centering is held to a looser threshold than front, consistent with market practice.
The boundary resolves downward. Photo measurement carries about ±2% of imprecision. That figure describes the accuracy of the measurement, not a wider band of acceptable centering. Where the measurement cannot establish which side of 55/45 a card falls on, it scores 9, not 10.
This is deliberate. See section 8.
Known limitation, stated plainly. The confidence figure in section 7 reports how much of the card we could see. It does not currently distinguish "the photo was clear but this measurement was borderline" from "the photo was clear and the measurement was decisive." Both report the same confidence. We resolve borderline cases downward rather than papering over them, but a reader should know that the confidence figure is about visibility, not about how close a call the grade was.
4.3 Corners
Scored on all eight corners, four per face, each examined individually.
| Score | Descriptor |
|---|---|
| 10 | All corners sharp. Zero fiber exposure or softening even on close inspection. |
| 9 | One corner with a pinpoint of whitening or slight softening, close inspection only. |
| 8 | Minor close-inspection wear on two or more corners. Not noticeable at normal distance. |
| 7 | Whitening or softening plainly noticeable at normal distance on one or two corners. Points still defined. |
| 6 | Noticeable wear on multiple corners, or obvious blunting on one. |
| 5 | Widespread moderate wear with early rounding. |
| 4 | Clear rounding. One or more corners no longer pointed. |
| 3 | Heavy rounding across corners. |
| 2 | Severe damage. Corners nearly circular, or material loss. |
| 1 | Corner or corners missing. |
4.4 Edges
| Score | Descriptor |
|---|---|
| 10 | All edges clean. Zero whitening even on close inspection. Smooth factory cut. |
| 9 | One tiny white fleck, close inspection only. |
| 8 | Two or three tiny flecks, or isolated minor roughness. Not noticeable at normal distance. |
| 7 | Whitening plainly noticeable along part of one edge, or a single tiny chip. |
| 6 | Noticeable whitening on multiple edges, continuous whitening along much of one edge, or a clear chip. |
| 5 | Heavy whitening across substantial portions, or multiple chips. |
| 4 | Whitening along most edge length, or heavy chipping throughout. |
| 3 | Nearly continuous whitening, or severe chipping and material loss. |
| 2 | Complete edge wear or major material loss. |
| 1 | Edge destroyed or delaminated. |
Roughness and whitening are different defects. A card can have a rough cut with no white showing.
4.5 Surface
Scored across both faces on a systematic nine-zone grid, eighteen zones total.
| Score | Descriptor |
|---|---|
| 10 | No confirmed handling defects. A single manufacturing print dot under 0.3mm in a non-critical area is acceptable. |
| 9 | One minor close-inspection flaw: a hairline scratch visible only at an angle, one or two tiny white dots, or a trace mark. |
| 8 | Two or more minor close-inspection flaws, a light scratch under 1cm, a small print defect, three to four white dots, or minor gloss loss. |
| 7 | A scratch, mark, or print defect plainly noticeable at normal distance. Five or more white dots. Moderate gloss loss or indentation. |
| 6 | Multiple noticeable defects, large print defect, heavy gloss loss, small stain, noticeable holo disruption. |
| 5 | Clear scratching, noticeable defects on both faces, medium stain, severe gloss loss. |
| 4 | Deep scratch into the coating, heavy scratching, large or multiple stains. |
| 3 | Severe surface damage across the card. |
| 2 | Extensive damage, delamination, or heavy staining. |
| 1 | Surface destroyed. |
5. The final grade: weakest link
The final grade is the lowest of the four category scores.
Final grade = MIN(centering, corners, edges, surface)
A card with Centering 9, Corners 8, Edges 9, Surface 7 grades 7. It is limited by Surface. There is no averaging and no weighting.
We state this plainly because it is stricter than some other graders, who allow an overall grade to sit above the lowest subgrade. We do not. A card is as good as its worst aspect, because that is the aspect a buyer will notice first.
Structural damage caps
Structural damage overrides everything else, however clean the rest of the card. When more than one cap applies, the lowest wins.
| Damage | Maximum grade |
|---|---|
| Crease or fold with colour break | 4 |
| Corner lift or tilt | 4 |
| Heavy crease, or multiple creases | 3 |
| Tear or rip | 3 |
| Missing piece | 2 |
Final = MIN(structural cap, lowest subgrade)
6. What does not count against a card
- Manufacturing variance. Factory-rounded corners on trading card stock, print dots, roller marks, and centering that left the cutting machine that way are characteristics of the card, not handling damage.
- Image artifacts. Marks visible only at extreme magnification that could be compression noise do not affect scores.
- Poor photography. Blur, glare and shadow lower our stated confidence. They never lower a grade. A card is not penalised for being photographed badly.
7. Confidence and uncertainty
Every grade carries a confidence letter based on how much of the card we could actually see.
| Letter | Visibility | Uncertainty |
|---|---|---|
| A | 95 to 100% | ±0 |
| B | 85 to 94% | ±1 |
| C | 70 to 84% | ±2 |
| D | Under 70% | ±3 |
Uncertainty is a reliability indicator, not a deduction. A grade of 8 with ±1 means our reading of the card is 8 and better photographs could move it a point in either direction. It does not mean the card is a 7.
A C or D means we recommend new photographs.
8. Which way we lean when we are unsure
Against overgrading.
Where a card sits genuinely on a boundary and the evidence cannot settle it, we take the lower grade and say so through the confidence figure.
The reasoning is asymmetric harm. An undergraded card disappoints its owner immediately, and they can ask us to look again. An overgraded card disappoints whoever buys it, months later, at the point of sale, when the correction is expensive and the trust is already spent.
9. How a grade is produced
DCM Optic™ evaluates every card as follows.
- Pre-grading verification. Authenticity, alterations, trimming, holder detection, image completeness.
- Image quality assessment. Establishes the confidence letter in section 7.
- Three independent evaluations. The card is graded three separate times.
- Median consensus. The middle of the three grades becomes the basis for the result. We take the median rather than the average deliberately: an average lets a single outlier pull the result, a median does not.
- Magnified inspection. Segmented crops of corners, edges and surface regions are examined at higher magnification, with multiple votes per region.
- Corroboration. Findings that would significantly lower a grade have to be
supported by more than one observation:
- Structural damage requires a majority of the three evaluations to agree, or confirmation from the magnified inspection.
- A magnified finding that would pull a category well below the main evaluation's reading requires either a second affected region or agreement from the main evaluation.
- Final calculation. Weakest link and structural caps, per section 5.
On corroboration, precisely
Corroboration applies to structural damage and to magnified findings that would substantially lower a category. It is not a blanket rule that every defect must appear in two of three evaluations. Ordinary defects observed in the evaluation that sets the consensus are reflected in the grade.
We state this precisely because a looser claim would be easy to write and would not be true.
10. Versioning
This standard is versioned independently of the grading engine.
- Standard version identifies the rules on this page.
- Engine version identifies the implementation that applied them. It appears on every grading report.
A change to any threshold, ladder row, or cap is a version increment and is recorded in the change log below. Grades are not retroactively restated when the standard changes. A report shows the standard and engine that produced it.
Change log
v1.0 — 26 August 2026. First publication as a standalone versioned standard.
Consolidates the criteria previously held only in the grading engine. No
threshold changes from engine DCM_Grading_v9.19.
11. Scope
This standard covers Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, sports, Lorcana, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Star Wars, and other trading cards graded from photographs.
Grading from photographs has limits, and this document is explicit about them: what we cannot see, we say we cannot see, through the confidence letter and through marking an axis or region as not assessable. We do not fill a gap in the evidence with a plausible number.
DCM Optic™ is a trademark of Dynamic Collectibles Management LLC. PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC are trademarks of their respective owners, referenced here only to describe the published criteria against which this standard is calibrated. DCM is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any of them.