Card condition basics: NM, LP, MP, and a glossary
What near mint, lightly played, and moderately played mean when you buy, sell, or trade raw cards.
Raw condition words are not grades. PSA 9 is a grader's score. "Near mint" is a seller's description. They are related, and they are not the same sentence.
Marketplaces publish their own charts and those charts differ. Use this as the hub's plain-language version, then match the specific site's rules when you list a card there.
The short scale
| Word | What you should see | What should make you pause |
|---|---|---|
| Near mint (NM) | Sharp corners, clean edges, no creases. Maybe a speck of whitening you have to look for. | A ding you can feel, a crease, or whitening you can see at arm's length. |
| Lightly played (LP) | Small edge whitening, a light surface scratch, still a card you'd sleeve and play. | A crease, a bent corner, or writing. |
| Moderately played (MP) | Whitening you notice immediately, a light crease, or several soft corners. | A tear, water damage, or a fold. |
| Heavily played (HP) | Creases, major whitening, rounded corners. The card is tired. | Missing paper, or damage that changes the art. |
| Damaged (DMG) | Tears, folds, water, stains, or pieces missing. | Listing this as LP. |
If you would be annoyed to open a mailbox and find it, do not call it the nicer word.
Where to look
Turn the card. Most optimism happens on the back.
- Corners. All eight of them, front and back. Whitening hides on the back tips.
- Edges. A silver or white line along a dark border is wear, not a design.
- Surface. Tilt it under a lamp. Scratches and print lines show up at an angle and disappear face-on.
- Centering. The border should not look like it is sliding off the card. Grading cares more than most raw buyers do, which is why a "NM" card can still be a poor grading candidate. See why pre-grade.
Glossary
- Raw. Ungraded. In a sleeve, a loader, or a binder.
- Slab. The sealed case a grading company returns.
- Holo / foil. The shiny layer. It shows scratches that a non-holo would hide.
- Whitening. The white paper showing through colored edges or corners.
- Print line. A line from the printing process, not from you. Graders can still care.
- Centering. How evenly the borders sit. Written as ratios, like 55/45.
- OC. Off center.
- Pop. How many copies a company has graded at each score. A big pop does not fix your copy.
- Penny sleeve. The thin soft sleeve. First layer.
- Toploader. The rigid sleeve most people use for trades and shows.
- Card Saver. A semi-rigid holder many grading submissions ask for instead of a toploader.
- Loader or top-load. Same family of rigid holders. Say which one if it matters.
One Piece and Riftbound
The words do not change. The art does. One Piece foils and textured rarities mark differently from a modern Pokémon holo, and a new Riftbound foil may not have years of "what a played copy looks like" photos yet. Compare against a card you opened yourself, and be stricter, not looser, when you are unsure.
Spotting fakes is the next page if the card is too cheap or too shiny for the story that came with it.