Module reference · Modern Pokémon & sports
What each flaw actually costs you
in a BGS and PSA grade
Twelve visible defects, mapped to the grade ceiling they impose and the subgrade they hit — under both grading standards. Every penalty is tagged by how solid the evidence is, and the published standard is kept separate from what the community observes. Tap any defect to open its full breakdown.
Start in Defects to see how far any single flaw drags a grade. Use BGS vs PSA to decide where to send a card once you know its weak spot (and try the centering calculator). The Standards holds the quoted, primary-source criteria. Observed Grades is real submission outcomes — useful, but it is community data, not the rulebook.
This map is the free front end of the Black Method — the pre-grading system behind every routing call above. Join the founder waitlist for first access and founder pricing when the course opens.
Join the founder waitlist →Section 01
01Defect explorer
Filter by the subgrade a flaw attacks, by how reliable the mapping is, or by which grader treats it more gently. Click a card for the full breakdown.
Section 02
02BGS vs PSA — the routing decision
The same flaw can cost a different amount at each company. Centering tolerances are the most checkable facts in grading, so they anchor the routing call. Numbers below are quoted from each grader's published standard.
Published centering tolerance — front / back, by grade
| Grade tier | BGS front | BGS back | PSA front | PSA back | Who's stricter |
|---|
Verbatim from beckett.com/grading/scale and blog.psacard.com. PSA has no 9.5 grade. BGS back tolerance (60/40 for a 9.5/10) is far tighter than PSA's 75/25 — the back of the card is where the two standards diverge most.
⚖︎ Centering calculator
Drag to your card's worst (widest) front and back centering ratio. The tool reads the grade off each company's published table — centering only, assuming everything else is perfect.
Centering is one of four BGS subgrades and only part of PSA's holistic call — a great centering number does not guarantee the grade, but a bad one caps it. Both graders allow small eye-appeal variance at their discretion.
Who is more forgiving, flaw by flaw
| Flaw | More forgiving | Why | Conf. |
|---|
The "9.5 gap"
PSA grades in whole numbers (no 9.5). BGS and CGC use half-points. A card that is clearly better than a 9 but not a flawless 10 lands a clean BGS 9.5 — but at PSA it is a coin-flip between a 10 and a 9, with nothing in between. For a "near-perfect-but-not-sure" card, BGS gives a landing zone; PSA forces a binary bet.
Black Label vs PSA 10
A BGS Black Label needs all four subgrades to be a perfect 10 — far harder than a PSA 10, which is a single holistic grade with large populations. If a card looks genuinely flawless under a loupe on all four axes, BGS is the Black-Label shot. If any one axis has a doubt, PSA's holistic eye is the more achievable 10. (Black Label rarity figures are community estimates — see Gaps.)
Section 03
03Predict my card
Tick every flaw your card has and set how bad each one is. The engine rolls them up into a likely grade at each company — BGS (lowest subgrade anchors it), PSA (holistic, structural damage caps it), and CGC (lenient composite) — then tells you which company is the softest route. It is a likelihood with a basis, never a guarantee.
🃏 Multi-flaw roll-up
Start with a clean card (all four subgrades a perfect 10). Each flaw you add drags the subgrade it hits. "Back" is available where the back of the card grades more leniently.
Section 03
03The published standards
Primary-source criteria, quoted. This is the rulebook the defect map is built on — everything here is from the graders themselves.
BGS / Beckett
Four subgrades · half-point scale · algorithmic roll-up
Four subgrades: Centering · Corners · Edges · Surface. Each scored 1–10 in half-points; corners and edges are checked under magnification.
The roll-up rule
In practice: the final grade is usually at most ½ point above the lowest subgrade, and "rarely, if ever, exceeds two levels" (+1.0) above it. Gem Mint 9.5 needs at least three 9.5 subgrades and the fourth no lower than 9. Black Label = all four subgrades a perfect 10.
PSA
Single 1–10 grade · no 9.5 · six qualifiers
One holistic grade. Half-grades exist (2.5–8.5) but are awarded sparingly; there is no PSA 9.5. 1.5 (Fair) is the lone named half-grade below.
Qualifiers (the six codes)
Since PSA's June 2021 update, only MK and MC are auto-applied. OC, ST, PD and OF are now at the grader's discretion and usually just lower the number instead of appearing as a label.
Section 04
04Observed grades — flaw → predicted → actual
Real submission outcomes pulled from public forums, where a visible flaw is followed by the grade that actually came back.
| Card | Visible flaw | Predicted | Actual | Grader | Reliability |
|---|
Patterns (each tied to 2+ observed cases)
Where graders disagreed
Section 05
05Confidence & the biggest gaps
Where the public record is thin, the map says so. These are the honest holes — the places a course should hedge or go gather first-party data.
High = the penalty is stated in a grader's published standard (centering numbers, BGS surface/print-line/scuff tiers, the roll-up rule, PSA grade definitions). Medium = consistent expert/secondary consensus but no per-grade primary number (PSA scratch/whitening ceilings, dents). Low = no primary standard names the defect; ceilings are inferred (orange-peel, dimples).
Orange-peel / holo texture
Neither BGS nor PSA uses the term in any published standard. Every ceiling for it is inferred from general "gloss / surface" language. The weakest-evidence defect in the map.
BGS per-subgrade centering
Beckett publishes centering against the overall grade (50/50 for a 10). Popular "55/45 = centering subgrade 10" tables are third-party interpretations — they conflict with the primary page. We use the primary numbers.
Dents, dimples & fingerprints
BGS and PSA never name these specifically. They fall under "surface" and are judged on severity/eye-appeal. Penalty ranges here lean on secondary guides and a few observed slabs.
Sports-card-specific outcomes
Nearly all accessible observed-grade cases were Pokémon. Crossover dynamics likely carry over, but no sports-specific flaw→grade pair was captured. A first-party sports dataset is the gap to fill.
Forum / YouTube / Reddit depth
Blowout, r/PSAcard and most video reveals are login- or JavaScript-walled to automated fetching. The richest "photo-before, grade-after" content needs a logged-in human pass to mine properly.
Exact qualifier & point deductions
Neither grader publishes a "this flaw = minus X" table. Every point-deduction figure in this map is a hobby rule-of-thumb, not a disclosed number — directionally right, not precise.
This map is the free front end of the Black Method — the pre-grading system behind every routing call above. Join the founder waitlist for first access and founder pricing when the course opens.
Join the founder waitlist →