Pokémon card condition: Near Mint, Lightly Played and the rest

Ungraded cards sell by condition grade, but Cardmarket, TCGplayer and eBay mean different things by similar names, and condition can move the price by up to two thirds.

An ungraded card, also called raw, has no grade from PSA, CGC or any other grader. Its condition is only the seller's statement. Sellers describe it with condition grades. There is no single standard: each marketplace sets its own grades, and the lines fall in different places.

Cardmarket uses seven grades: Mint, Near Mint, Excellent, Good, Light Played, Played and Poor. Mint is perfect, fresh from the booster. Near Mint looks as if the card was never played without a sleeve: a few very small white spots on the border are allowed, scratches never. Excellent shows small flaws at first glance, such as white corners. Good is clearly worn, but has no bends or water damage. Light Played is heavily worn but still tournament legal in a sleeve. Played is as worn as a card can get through play. Poor is destroyed or altered, for example painted or written on. On Cardmarket, a scratched card is Good at best.

The US marketplace TCGplayer has five grades: Near Mint, Lightly Played, Moderately Played, Heavily Played and Damaged. It does not sell Mint at all. TCGplayer measures flaws in millimetres. Edge wear of up to 20 mm in one stretch is still allowed at Near Mint. Once the ink is worn through and the card stock shows, the card is no longer Near Mint. A crease caps a card at Moderately Played. Damaged covers anything that harms the card itself: tears, split corners, liquid, stamps, signatures or centering worse than 70/30.

The names sound alike but mean different things. Cardmarket's Light Played is grade five of seven. TCGplayer's Lightly Played is grade two of five and roughly matches Excellent. Cardmarket itself warns about the mix-up. As a rule of thumb, Near Mint matches Near Mint, Excellent matches Lightly Played, Good matches Moderately Played, Played matches Heavily Played and Poor matches Damaged. Light Played sits in between and has no clean match. No mapping is exact, because the standards differ: Cardmarket, for example, is much stricter about scratches than TCGplayer.

On eBay, sellers have chosen between Graded and Ungraded since late 2023. Ungraded collectible card game singles have four grades: Near Mint or Better, Lightly Played (Excellent), Moderately Played (Very Good) and Heavily Played (Poor). There is no separate grade for damaged cards. So the Poor in brackets is not the same as Cardmarket's Poor. eBay does not check the label, and many listings give no condition at all.

Typical flaws are white spots on edges and corners (whitening), scratches and dull haze on the holo foil, dents and indents, bends, creases, water damage and discoloration. Print defects such as print lines or off-center cuts are not wear. Cardmarket leaves them out of the grade; TCGplayer counts them by size. White spots show best on the dark blue back, so every listing should include a photo of the back.

Condition moves the price a lot. An example from eBay sales tracked by Last Sold: the English Base Set Charizard (4/102, ungraded) sold from May to October 2026 for a median of 514 € in Near Mint, 375 € in Lightly Played, 307 € in Moderately Played, 220 € in Heavily Played and 182 € as Damaged. Lightly Played cost about a quarter less, Damaged about two thirds less. Across all cards the picture is similar. Because the grade is only the seller's word, look at sharp photos of front and back before buying an expensive card.

Sources

• Cardmarket Hilfe: Kartenzustand
• Cardmarket Help: Card Condition
• TCGplayer: Card Conditioning Overview
• TCGplayer: Understanding Card Condition Imperfections
• eBay Seller Center: Selling trading cards
• eBay Verkäuferportal: Sammelkarten
• eBay Developers: Condition Descriptor IDs for Trading Cards
• Last Sold: Glurak (Base Set 4/102)

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