Guide
How to use the SlabScore platform, and how to read a Grading Outlook.
How to use it
From adding a card to recording its grade.
- Add your cardsOne at a time, or a CSV of the lot.Collection
- Open To-dosWhat needs you, in the order a delay costs you.To-dos
- Set the grade you expectOne card at a time. Each grade you set rates the card.Judging
- Read the outlookA number from 0 to 100 for that grade, at that company.Deciding
- Grade it or keep it rawOr Not sure — later; it comes back at the end.Deciding
- Build a submissionDecided cards go into a box for one company.Plan
- Send itMark the box sent when it ships.Plan
- Record the gradesEnter what each card came back at.Plan
To-dos shows where every card is: Raw → Judged → Decided → In a submission → At the grader → Graded.
How to read a Grading Outlook
One real card, read top to bottom.
The card, and the grade you named
Umbreon VMAX
- It answers
- What is this card worth at the grade you say it will get, what does getting there cost, and is the difference worth having?
- It refuses
- What grade this card will get.
| Four parts | What it read on this card | Rated | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profit potentialHow hard the money you put in works.27% return at PSA 10 | 27% return at PSA 10 | 40/ 100 | 35% |
| Grade premiumHow much money is actually on the table.$916.31 added over selling it raw ($2,404.28) | $916.31 added over selling it raw ($2,404.28) | 65/ 100 | 20% |
| Market depthWhether you can actually sell it once it comes back.162.0 sales/month at PSA | 162.0 sales/month at PSA | 100/ 100 | 25% |
| DownsideWhat happens to the money if it grades lower than you said.29% lost if it grades 9 | 29% lost if it grades 9 | 36/ 100 | 20% |
Weighted togetherGrading Outlook
59
Each part’s rating times its weight, added up · sales counted once, on 2026-09-14. The working, line by line →
When something looks wrong
Each question opens its answer in the rating key.
- Why does a price show a dash?
- Why is the outlook lower than I expected?
- Why won’t it tell me what grade my card will get?
- Why is my outlook different from someone else’s?
- Why didn’t the outlook move when I changed what I paid?
- Why does one part have no rating?
- Why didn’t double the return give double the outlook?
- Why did setting a grade use one of my Grading Outlooks?
Rating key
How each number in the outlook is worked out, read from the rating model when the page loads.
Section 1 of 10 · The outlook
One card, all the way through
Umbreon VMAX
Each part reads one thing about the card and rates it from 0 to 100 on its own. Its weight sets how much of the outlook it can make up; the weights add up to 100%.
| Part | What it read | Rated | Weight | Adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profit potential27% return at PSA 10 | 27% return at PSA 10 | 40.5/ 100 | 35% | 14.2 |
| Grade premium$916.31 added over selling it raw ($2,404.28) | $916.31 added over selling it raw ($2,404.28) | 65.4/ 100 | 20% | 13.1 |
| Market depth162.0 sales/month at PSA | 162.0 sales/month at PSA | 100.0/ 100 | 25% | 25.0 |
| Downside29% lost if it grades 9 | 29% lost if it grades 9 | 35.5/ 100 | 20% | 7.1 |
| Grading Outlook, the parts added up59.4, rounded to the nearest whole number | 59 | |||
81 PSA sales over 15 days, counted once on 2026-09-14 — every PSA grade of this printing, not the 10 alone.
Section 2 of 10 · The outlook
What the outlook answers
What is this card worth at the grade you say it will get, what does getting there cost, and is the difference worth having?
You pick the grader and the grade. We price that exact market, subtract the fee, postage both ways and the marketplace’s cut, and show what is left.
What grade this card will get.
No gem rate, no odds, nothing trained on photos or the population report — a number that looks like odds gets spent like odds. A card with no grade set has no outlook, and that is the finished state.
Section 3 of 10 · The outlook
The four components
Each is rated 0–100 on its own curve, weighted, and added up — the same arithmetic every card’s breakdown shows.
Each has its own page: its curve, where 524 measured cards land on it, and what happens when it cannot be read.
Section 4 of 10 · Reading the number
What the number turns into
One computation produces the outlook and the word, so they cannot disagree.
Grade
60+
The money, the market and the fall-back all point the same way.
Marginal
40–59
Works on paper; something is thin. Read the breakdown before you send it.
Keep raw
< 40
Grading does not pay for itself at the grade you named.
Above all three: a card that loses money by being graded is KEEP RAW at any outlook.
Section 5 of 10 · Reading the number
A missing price is not a zero
A price that cannot be read shows as an em dash and its reason. It is never counted as $0.
“We do not know what it sells for” and “it sells for nothing” lead to opposite decisions. When anything the outlook reads is missing there is no outlook at all — never one worked out from the rest and shown as whole.
- What the outlook reads
- what it sells for at the grade you named
- what it is worth ungraded
- what grading it costs you
- how often it sells
- a worse outcome to price it against
Every reason a figure shows a dash
- — No sales recorded at this grade, explained in the guide
- Nobody has sold this card at this grade in that market. A real finding about the card.
- — Not entered yet, explained in the guide
- You have not told us yet — what you paid, or which grade you expect.
- — Priced in another currency, explained in the guide
- The vendor prices this row in another currency — a Japanese card’s raw price is in yen while its graded sales are in dollars — and no exchange rate could be read today. When the day’s rate is available the row is converted to dollars at that rate; without one it is refused rather than shown under the wrong symbol.
- — Not covered, explained in the guide
- That grader does not cover this game, or does not price in dollars. Not missing: impossible.
- — Not loaded, explained in the guide
- We failed to load it. That one is ours, not yours, and it means the number is coming back.
- — Does not apply here, explained in the guide
- The quantity does not exist for this row — the bottom rung of a ladder has no grade below it to gain over. Not missing, and no amount of data would fill it.
- — Different market, explained in the guide
- Both numbers exist, but they came from different graders’ markets, so subtracting one from the other would not describe this card. We show each price and refuse the comparison.
- — Not recorded at the time, explained in the guide
- It was true when a submission was sent and nobody wrote it down. Unlike everything above, waiting will not fill this in — what a submission cost is frozen at the moment it leaves, and a figure worked out from today’s fee tables would be one you were never charged.
- — Daily limit reached, explained in the guide
- Your plan’s lookups or Grading Outlooks for today are used, so this was never asked for. Nothing is wrong with the card or its market: the figure arrives when the allowance resets at midnight UTC, or straight away on a plan with more.
- — Not fetched, explained in the guide
- The vendor has this number and we chose not to fetch it. A grader’s all-time sale count is context, not an outlook input, so when the card’s most recent sales already hold enough of that grader’s graded cards the rate is built from those and the total is left unbought — the caption says how many of the last hundred sales were counted instead.
Section 6 of 10 · Reading the number
The outlook is yours, not a universal one
Your postage, marketplace cut and default grader move every number on every card — two people can rightly get different answers for the same card.
Section 7 of 10 · What goes in
What you paid never touches the outlook
The outlook asks whether grading pays from here. What you paid is already gone, and it reaches the outlook by no route.
Your purchase price builds your own profit and loss, shown beside the outlook — so two people holding one card get one outlook.
Section 8 of 10 · What goes in
Why the curves bend
Money moves by multiplying, so a scale counting in equal steps cannot describe it.
Ten dollars to a hundred is a different event from ten thousand to ten thousand and ninety; a straight line rates them the same, and put 41% of tested cards inside one ten-point band. So three curves level off. Downside stays straight — it already has a floor and a ceiling.
524
card-variants measured
3
expansions
2026-07-28
calibrated on
Section 9 of 10 · What goes in
When a component cannot apply
“We could not measure this” and “this cannot exist for this card” are different facts.
A card at the bottom of its ladder has no grade below it, so no downside. That component drops out and the other 3 share its weight, keeping the outlook on the same 0–100 scale:
| Component | Normally | No downside |
|---|---|---|
| Profit potential | 35% | 44% |
| Grade premium | 20% | 25% |
| Market depth | 25% | 31% |
| Downside | 20% | drops out |
Section 10 of 10 · Questions
Common questions
- What is the Grading Outlook?
- A number from 0 to 100 for one card at the grade you expect, and one word: GRADE, MARGINAL or KEEP RAW. It is built from four parts, each shown on the card’s page: Profit potential (return on the money you put in); Grade premium (dollars grading adds over selling it raw); Market depth (how often this printing sells, at any grade); Downside (what you keep if it grades one lower).
- Do you predict what grade my card will get?
- No. You pick the grade you expect, and every figure is worked out for that grade. Every grade’s sale price is shown side by side so you can compare them yourself.
- Where do the prices come from?
- From recorded sales of that exact printing, graded and raw, gathered by a card-data provider. Where your company has no sale at a grade, PSA’s price for that grade fills in, labelled as PSA’s; the fee is always your company’s.
- Why does a price show a dash instead of a number?
- A dash means the figure is not known — usually because no sale of that card at that grade has been recorded. We never show a missing price as zero, because “worth nothing” and “we do not know” lead to opposite decisions.
- What do the plans include?
- Free (free): 5 Grading Outlooks and 5 lookups a day; Basic ($9.99 a month): unlimited Grading Outlooks and 25 lookups a day; Pro ($19.99 a month): unlimited Grading Outlooks and 100 lookups a day; Unlimited ($39.99 a month): unlimited Grading Outlooks and unlimited lookups a day. A lookup is a search or a price check; a Grading Outlook is one card rated at one grade. Allowances reset at midnight UTC.
- How many cards can I add from a photo?
- On the Free plan, 3 photos a day. On a paid plan, each photo uses one of your daily lookups. You need to be signed in, and the photo is used only to identify the card — it is not kept.
- How are grading fees and costs worked out?
- From each company’s published price list, sized on what your card is worth, plus the postage and the selling fee you set in Settings. Postage is counted once per submission and shared across its cards.
- Do the website and the phone app share my cards?
- Yes. Your collection lives in your account, so the website, the phone app and the browser extension all show the same cards once you are signed in.
- I deleted or lost cards by mistake. Can I get them back?
- Probably. A card you move to the trash stays there for 30 days. Every save of your collection is also kept for 90 days — go to Settings → Your data → Earlier versions and restore the one from before the mistake. Restoring is itself kept, so you can undo it.
- How do I delete my account?
- Settings → Account → Delete my account. The account is signed out everywhere and deleted 30 days later; signing back in before then cancels the deletion.
- How do I reach a person?
- Send a message from this page, or email admin@slabscore.io. A reply goes to the address you give.
- Still stuck?
- Send us a message.