Card Corners and Grading: What Graders Look For
Quick answer
Graders look for four sharp corners with no whitening, fraying, dings or rounding. A PSA 10 requires four perfectly sharp corners. Corner damage is the most common reason a card with good centering misses the top grade, and it is easy to miss without magnification and angled light.
What a sharp corner looks like
A card corner is where two cut edges meet at a right angle. On a new card, the corner is a crisp point. As the card is handled, shuffled, stored loosely or bumped, the point softens and the stock beneath the printed layer shows through.
Graders check all four corners, front and back, and the weakest corner usually sets the ceiling for the corners score.
The wear progression
Corner wear tends to follow a predictable sequence.
- Sharp. A clean point, no color change, no fiber showing.
- Slight touch. A hint of whitening or a tiny loss of sharpness, visible mainly under magnification.
- Soft. The tip is visibly rounded or has a small area of whitening.
- Whitened or fuzzy. Fibers are visible and the printed layer has worn off at the tip.
- Dinged or frayed. The corner is bent, crushed or the layers have separated.
- Rounded. The corner has lost its shape.
At the top of the scale, the difference between step 1 and step 2 is the difference between a candidate for a 10 and a card capped at 9.
How to inspect corners properly
- Use angled light. A bright lamp held low across the card makes soft corners and slight bends visible as shadows.
- Magnify. A loupe or a macro phone shot shows what the eye misses.
- Check both sides. Back corners often wear first, because the back is the side that touches a surface.
- Check every corner. Do not stop when you find one good one.
Dark-bordered and light-bordered cards
On cards with a white or light border, whitening is hard to see because the worn stock is the same color as the border. The flaw may only show as softness. On cards with dark or colored borders, whitening stands out immediately as pale flecks. Graders see both, so do not assume a light-bordered card has sharper corners just because the damage is harder to see.
Common causes of corner damage
- loose storage in a box with other cards
- pulling cards out of sleeves with the corners catching
- toploaders that are too large and let the card slide
- stacking cards without sleeves
- shipping without a rigid holder
If you are sorting a stack before you grade, protect the corners first and pre-grade second.
What to do next
Once you have inspected corners, check edges and whitening and surface defects. Corners and edges often fail together, so the same handling mistakes show up in both. Then run the full pre-grade checklist.
Frequently asked questions
How sharp do corners have to be for a PSA 10?
PSA describes a Gem Mint 10 as having four perfectly sharp corners. Even a minor touch of softness on one corner can prevent a 10.
Can corner whitening be fixed?
Do not try. Altering a card to hide wear can be detected and can result in a no-grade designation such as evidence of restoration, recoloring or altered stock.
How can I see corner wear in a photo?
Photograph each corner close up on a dark background, with soft, angled light. Whitening shows as pale flecks where the colored card stock has worn through.
Before you pay for grading
Put your card through the same tests, free.
Before The Grade turns the grading companies' published standards into measurable checks. Upload the front and back of a card and get a condition report that shows every measurement and every flaw it found, so you can judge the prediction yourself. 1 free report when you confirm your email.
Grading companies revise their standards and service levels. Figures here reflect what each company has published at the time of writing, so confirm details on the company's own site before you submit. Before The Grade is independent and is not affiliated with PSA, BGS, CGC or SGC.