Football card grading
Prizm, Select, Mosaic, Donruss Optic, National Treasures and vintage. Thick stock, patch autos and one-of-ones all graded to the same published 1–10 scale, at one flat price.
Baseball is mostly cardboard and basketball is mostly chrome. Football is everything at once: base paper, chrome parallels, die-cut inserts, thick jersey and patch cards, booklets, sticker autos and on-card autos — often inside the same product.
Each of those constructions fails differently, which is why football submissions come back with a wider spread of grades than any other sport. The four criteria don't change; what changes is which one bites.
The single most common reason a clean-looking football card comes back below a 10. Any contact with an edge exposes the white core underneath and it reads instantly against black or colour. Plenty of these cards are chipped before they ever leave the factory, from cutting and collating.
Thick cards are prone to edge separation where the layers meet, and swatch windows can lift or sit unevenly. Patch cards in particular get judged on how cleanly the swatch is set as part of the card's surface, not just on the cardboard around it.
The sticker is part of the surface. Lifting corners, bubbles, smearing and faded ink on the sticker are all surface defects, and they're common enough on football autos to decide the grade on their own. On-card signatures avoid the failure mode entirely, which is part of why the market prefers them.
Same story as basketball: print lines and hairline scratches show under angled light, and die-cut edges are almost impossible to keep perfect. Centering on die-cuts is measured against the die shape, which is less forgiving than it sounds.
The hard truth about football rookies: value concentrates in a handful of players per class, and it takes two or three seasons to know which. A cheap fee is what lets you grade the class instead of betting on one name. Run it against the card grading cost breakdown.
Patch autos, booklets, jumbo relics and anything unusually thick are graded to the same scale and sealed in a case sized for the card. If you're submitting something outside normal card dimensions, or thicker than a standard relic, get in touch first so we can confirm the right holder before your cards arrive rather than after.
Ship thick cards in a semi-rigid holder that actually fits — forcing a thick card into a standard holder creates edge damage on the way in, which is a genuinely common self-inflicted grade loss.
No membership, no declared-value tiers, and no upcharge for thick cards or patch autos. Optional custom labels are $3 a card.
$7 per card for Premium service, with faster tiers at $9 and $15. Submissions of 100 cards or more go through our Bulk service, which starts at $5 per card on a 90-day turnaround and is quoted per submission. There's no declared-value upcharge, so a rookie patch autograph costs the same to grade as a base card.
Yes. Thick-stock cards with jersey swatches, patches and booklet designs are graded to the same scale and sealed in a case sized for the card. Contact us before submitting anything unusually thick or oversized so we can confirm the holder before your cards arrive.
Quarterback rookies above everything else, then rookies at other premium positions, numbered and coloured parallels, on-card rookie autographs, and vintage in strong condition. Football rookie value is concentrated in a small number of players per class, so the honest question is usually whether the player will still matter in three years.
Not necessarily as a grade, but the sticker itself becomes part of the card's surface. Lifting corners, bubbles, and ink that's smeared or faded on the sticker are all surface defects, and they're common enough on football autos to be the deciding factor. On-card signatures avoid that failure mode entirely, which is part of why the market prefers them.
Because any contact with an edge exposes the white core underneath, and it reads instantly against a black or coloured border. Many dark-bordered cards leave the factory with chipping already present from cutting and collating. It's the single most common reason a visually clean football card comes back below a 10.
Premium is 30 days, Express 10 days and Diamond 2 days, and Bulk submissions of 100+ cards are 90 days. The grade, the slab and the live tracking are identical at every tier, so the faster tiers only buy speed.
