What to check before you trade a card, what the words mean, and what you are still missing. Written to be read on a phone in a room with no signal, so everything below is on this page already.
Any of your lists, minus the cards you already have, grouped by set because that is how a seller's stock is organised.
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Ordered by how much each check actually tells you, so if you only do two, do the first two. The first four cost nothing but a loupe.
Every English back since 1999 shares one design, so any authentic card works as a reference. Fakes bleed between the dark blue border and the lighter interior, or print dull and washed out. Highest value, costs nothing.
Genuine vintage stock has a fine linen-like texture. Counterfeits feel smooth, waxy or plasticky.
A real stamp has crisp edges, even ink depth and precise placement. Fakes, often stamped onto genuine Shadowless cards after the fact, show ragged edges, uneven ink, or visible inkjet dots.
Genuine cards sandwich a light-blocking black layer between the front and back sheets. Counterfeits are usually one sheet of paperboard with no dark middle line.
Roughly 1.7 to 1.8 grams and 0.31 to 0.32 mm thick, on a standard 63 by 88 mm card. Treat the weight and thickness as unconfirmed: they trace to one uncorroborated source, a second guide gives 1.65 to 1.75 g instead, and nobody has actually weighed a card. The 63 by 88 mm is a printing standard and is not in dispute.
Base, Jungle and Fossil use the pixelated Starlight pattern confined to the art window. Cosmos did not arrive until Base Set 2, so a Cosmos-pattern "Base Set" card is wrong on its face.
1st Edition and Shadowless carry the doubled 99, "(c)1995, 96, 98, 99". Unlimited drops it.
Lowest value. It catches cheap fakes, but good counterfeiters work from high-resolution scans and their text is perfect.
Skip the flashlight test
Shining a light through a card to judge its opacity is the most commonly repeated check there is, and professional authenticators do not use it. The Pokemon Company used several paperboard suppliers, so genuine cards vary in opacity and the test produces false positives. Do not fail a real card on it, and do not pass a fake on it.
This is how marketplaces ask you to describe a card, not a grading standard. PSA and CGC assign numbers against published criteria; these are words.
| Tier | Surface and foil | Edges and corners |
|---|---|---|
| NMNear Mint | Clean sheen, no scratching or clouding, no dent or crease. | Micro-whitening on one or two corner specks at most. |
| LPLightly Played | Minor surface scuffs or edgewear, no major creases. | Minor whitening on two or three edges or corners. |
| MPModerately Played | Noticeable scratching, clouding, or binder indentation. | Moderate whitening along several edges. |
| HPHeavily Played | Major scratching, creasing, foil peeling, heavy whitening. | Heavy whitening, soft or rounded corners. |
| DMGDamaged | Structural: deep crease, tear, ink, water damage. | Peeling cardstock, missing layers, a permanent bend. |
Average three to five completed sales from the last thirty days. Never one outlier, and never an asking price. eBay sold listings or TCGplayer market price, and use the same source for both sides of the trade.
Then ask who is across the table, because that is the variable everyone leaves out.
Match market value both ways, within about 10%.
They have to resell it and pay fees to do so.
Credit is cheaper for them than cash, so it buys you more.
Expect to give 110 to 125% of face value when trading several cards up into one better card. The person taking the bundle is taking on the work of moving all of it.
Nobody verified any of this and nobody could. It is manners.
Do
Do not