Grading Outlook
Profit potential
How hard the money you put in works.
What it measures
Grading costs you the fee, the postage both ways, and the raw card you could have sold today. Return is what comes back divided by all of that. It levels off high up, because the gap between doubling your money and tripling it matters far less than the gap between losing it and doubling it.
A 50% return rates 57 points. A loss stops at 0 rather than going negative — one weak input should not drag a card below zero, and a card that loses money is refused outright anyway.
On one real card
Umbreon VMAX — Evolving Skies, Holofoil, asked at PSA 10.
27% return at PSA 10
40 / 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 | Points | Contributes |
|---|---|---|
| -72%bottom tenth | 0 | 0.0 |
| -53%bottom quarter | 0 | 0.0 |
| 15%median card | 26 | 9.2 |
| 152%top quarter | 86 | 30.1 |
| 350%top tenth | 100 | 35.0 |
| 598%top one percent | 100 | 35.0 |
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 sells for at the grade you named cannot be read, this has no figure and the outlook says so rather than guessing one.
- 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.
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.
The other three