Free tool — The Black Method

Which grader should this card go to?

Same card, three different grades — BGS anchors to your worst subgrade, PSA grades the whole card with hard structural caps, CGC rolls up leniently. Enter your defect read and see each grader's likely outcome and the routing EV, from the same standards matrix behind our defect explorer.

Card & market

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The baseline every route has to beat — selling raw costs no fee and no wait.

Applied to the raw sale and every graded outcome alike. Exact venue stacks: /sell.

Your defect read

Check every flaw you found under a bright angled light — front and back. Severity: faint = loupe / tilt-to-see · visible = plain view once you look · prominent = jumps out. The defect map shows you exactly how to spot each one.

Routing call

Likelihood, not a guarantee — grading is subjective and the same card can grade differently on different days. Use this to route, not to promise.

Full ROI math → Exact selling fees → Re-check the defects →
⚠ How this predicts — and what it won't do: your defect read maps onto published grading standards (BGS lowest-subgrade anchoring, PSA holistic caps, CGC composite roll-up). No grader publishes a per-flaw deduction table, so every prediction carries a confidence tag — and where no published standard exists, this tool says so instead of inventing a number. Every output is a likelihood, never a promise.

Haven't done the defect read yet? Learn the four reads in the defect map, measure borders with the centering estimator, or run the full pre-grading checklist.

Want the full method?

Routing is one decision inside the Black Method — the pre-grading system that reads the card, picks the grader, and runs the numbers before a cent goes to fees. Join the waitlist for first access when the course opens.

Join the waitlist →

Grading prices July 2026 (PSA re-verified live Jul 6, 2026 — Value tiers paused). TAG isn't routed here: the matrix has no TAG coverage yet, and TAG's Basic/Standard/Express were closed to new submissions at last check. The grade you actually receive drives everything.

Want the full method? Join the waitlist →