Grading Outlook
Downside
What happens to the money if it grades lower than you said.
What it measures
Priced at the next worse outcome that actually sells — on a ladder with gaps that is not always the grade immediately below. This is a money question and never a likelihood: the engine does not know, estimate or imply your odds of grading lower, only what it would cost you.
Losing everything one grade down rates 0 points, breaking even 50, doubling your money 100. The one curve left deliberately straight: it already has a floor and a ceiling, and bending it would blur losing a little into losing the lot.
On one real card
Umbreon VMAX — Evolving Skies, Holofoil, asked at PSA 10.
29% lost if it grades 9
36 / 100
This component alone, before its weight is applied; the outlook is the four weighted together — all four on this card.
How the number is rated
Money moves by multiplying, so a scale counting in equal steps cannot describe it.
Where real cards land
Real cards, not illustrative ones: 524 card-variants measured on 2026-07-28, run back through the live curve.
| Return one grade down | Points | Contributes |
|---|---|---|
| -100% | 0 | 0.0 |
| -50% | 25 | 5.0 |
| 0% | 50 | 10.0 |
| 50% | 75 | 15.0 |
| 100% | 100 | 20.0 |
When it has no figure
A component with no figure is an em dash and a reason, never a zero — and the card is still rated on what it does have.
- If what it is worth ungraded cannot be read, this has no figure and the outlook says so rather than guessing one.
- If what grading it costs you cannot be read, this has no figure and the outlook says so rather than guessing one.
- If a worse outcome to price it against cannot be read — and at the bottom of a ladder there is nothing below to price — this drops out entirely and the other three share its weight.
Which of those it was is named on the card itself, as an em dash you can click. Every reason, and whose problem each one is.