How to read a PSA, CGC or TAG label before you buy

Last updated 14 September 2026.

A grading label is a claim, and it is one you can check in about ninety seconds before money moves. This page covers what each grader prints, what the abbreviations mean, how to look a cert number up, and the physical checks that catch a holder that has been opened and resealed.

Everything below comes from the graders' own published material. Where a grader's own pages contradict each other, or where a widely repeated claim has no source behind it, this page says so instead of picking a side.

On this page

• What is printed on a PSA label
• What the PSA grade abbreviations mean
• PSA qualifiers, and why you rarely see them now
• CGC Pristine 10 against Gem Mint 10
• Why some CGC slabs have subgrades and others do not
• What a TAG Score is, and why it has three digits
• How to verify a cert with each grader
• Which grader is strictest
• How to spot a tampered slab
• What a population report does and does not tell you

What is printed on a PSA label

PSA's current insert is called the LightHouse label. The front carries red trim around the card details, a brush-stroke pattern printed in fugitive ink, and the PSA hologram in the lower centre. The back carries a blue band, the PSA logo, and a QR code. Since December 2015 the back of the insert also carries the cert number a second time, with its own barcode.

The fields you read from top to bottom are the year and set, the card name, the card number, any variety or pedigree note, the grade, and the certification number. The cert number sits below the grade.

Two numbers get confused constantly, and the difference matters when you are checking rarity:

• The certification number identifies that one slab. Nothing else in the world carries it. Current PSA certs run to nine digits. PSA's own glossary still says seven or eight, which is out of date; the certs coming out of PSA today are longer than the glossary claims.
• The spec number identifies the catalogue line, meaning that card, in that set, in that variety. Every copy of the same card shares it, and it is the key PSA's population report is organised around. PSA does not define the term anywhere in its own documentation, which is worth knowing before you take anyone's explanation of it as official.

There is one more field on the cert record that almost nobody uses, and it is a genuine verification tool: Reverse Cert/Barcode. It tells you whether that specific slab should have a cert number printed on the back. A modern holder reads Yes. A holder made before December 2015 reads No. If the record says Yes and the slab in the photographs has a blank reverse, something is wrong.

What the PSA grade abbreviations mean

There is no PSA 9.5. PSA added half grades in February 2008 and excluded 9.5 specifically, so the half-point set runs 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5, 7.5, 8.5 and stops. A half grade prints with a plus, as in NM-MT+ 8.5. Anyone offering you a PSA 9.5 is describing something that does not exist.

There is no PSA black label either. Black Label is a Beckett designation for a card with four perfect subgrades. PSA does not issue one. PSA's only blue label is the autograph-only label introduced in June 2024, which certifies the signature and not the item it is written on.

One label to read carefully: a slab reading Authentic may be an altered card. PSA states in its own guarantee terms that it sometimes omits the word Altered from labels for technical reasons, and that the guarantee does not distinguish between the two.

PSA qualifiers, and why you rarely see them now

A qualifier means the card met every standard for its grade except one. PSA publishes six:

• OC, off centre beyond the standard for the grade
• OF, out of focus
• MK, a pen, pencil or ink mark
• MC, miscut, with little or no border or part of another card showing
• ST, staining
• PD, print defect

Here is the part most buying guides have not updated. Since June 2021, PSA applies MK and MC when warranted, and assigns the other four at the grader's discretion, where they will "most typically impact the numerical grade rather than carrying a qualifier". In practice a modern off-centre card gets a lower number instead of an 8OC. That makes an OC qualifier on a recent slab unusual, and makes qualifiers on older slabs more common than a new buyer expects.

CGC Pristine 10 against Gem Mint 10

CGC has two tens, and they are not the same card.

• Pristine 10 is flawless to the naked eye with 50/50 centring and flawless colour and registration. It gets an exclusive gold label.
• Gem Mint 10 is a card graded 10 overall where one criterion falls short of Pristine. Corners look perfect without magnification but show minor imperfections under it. Front centring may not exceed roughly 55/45, reverse centring roughly 75/25.

CGC also runs a Mint+ 9.5 between Mint 9 and Gem Mint 10, which PSA does not have. That single step is why cross-grader price comparisons at the top end mislead so often: a CGC 9.5 has no PSA equivalent.

Perfect 10 is retired. It was a Pristine 10 with all four subgrades at 10, and CGC no longer issues it, though existing slabs keep the designation.

One label colour is worth recognising before you bid. Green means Qualified, and CGC uses it for three things: significant defects or alterations, evidence of restoration, or an unwitnessed signature. A green label is not a grade tier, it is a warning to read the label text.

Why some CGC slabs have subgrades and others do not

Because CGC stopped. Its own FAQ says plainly that subgrades are no longer offered. When they existed, the four were centring, surface, corners and edges, and from January 2022 they printed automatically on every Perfect 10.

So a CGC card slab showing subgrades is an older slab. CGC has not published the date it stopped, so that is as precise as anyone can honestly be.

What a TAG Score is, and why it has three digits

TAG prints no paper label at all. The grade and the card data are inscribed directly inside the holder, with a QR code linking to the card's report and a PROOF mark on the back for phone verification.

Alongside the familiar 1 to 10 grade, TAG assigns a score from 100 to 1000. The first digit lines up with the grade, so 800 to 849 is a grade 8. At the top:

The point is that two Gem Mint 10s are no longer interchangeable. One at 975 and one at 951 carry the same grade and a visibly different score.

A trap on older TAG slabs. On 12 January 2023 TAG rebased the display. Before that date 925 represented a 10; after it, 950 to 1000 does. TAG says the grading standards and algorithms did not change, only the number shown. If you are looking at a TAG slab scored in the 920s, check whether it predates the change before you read it as a 9.

TAG also publishes eight subgrades on its DIG+ report, being centring, corners, surface and edges scored separately front and back, with defects annotated on the scan. That is more of the grader's working shown than either of the other two publishes.

One cosmetic thing that alarms people: the marks around the perimeter of a TAG slab are the sonic welding points. They look more obvious than on a frosted-edge holder because TAG keeps the edges optically clear. They are not cracks.

How to verify a cert with each grader

Every listing on this site carries its cert number and a link straight to the grader's own lookup, so you can check the card before you deal with us at all. That is the intended order.

TAG's own cert search page tells you to enter an eight digit number while its other page describes the format as one letter and seven numbers. The published examples are letter plus seven digits, so use that.

What verification does not do. PSA says this itself, and it deserves repeating: verifying a cert number "does not eliminate risk", because counterfeiters do produce fake inserts carrying real cert numbers. A lookup confirms that the number belongs to a card matching that description. It does not confirm that the slab in the photograph is that slab. The grade, year, set, card number and any variety note all have to match what you are looking at, and the physical checks below still apply.

Which grader is strictest

Nobody knows, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

There is no measured head to head study of the same cards graded by PSA, CGC and TAG from any primary source. No grader publishes its own gem rate. The comparison articles that rank the three by strictness are opinion, and they do not say so.

What can be compared is what the graders publish about their own tolerances. On front centring at the top grade they are effectively identical:

Two real differences fall out of that. TAG's published reverse centring tolerance is tighter than CGC's. And PSA has no tier above its 10, while both CGC and TAG do, which is the actual reason a CGC Pristine 10 and a PSA 10 are not the same claim.

On volume rather than strictness, the 2025 figures compiled by GemRate put PSA at 19.26 million cards graded, CGC Cards at 4.92 million, SGC at 1.42 million, Beckett above 824,000 and TAG above 440,000, with PSA holding about 72 percent of the market and 69 percent of TCG.

How to spot a tampered slab

These are PSA's own published buyer checks. They apply in spirit to any ultrasonically welded holder.

• Look along the weld. Frosting where the plastic turns cloudy at the edge, or small fractures at the seam, means the case has been worked on.
• Flex it. A genuine sealed holder is firm and does not give. Once a sonic weld is broken the plastic becomes flexible again, and glue does not restore the weld.
• Hold it to the light and look through the label. You should be able to see the printing on the far side through the insert. An opaque label can be a counterfeit laid over the genuine one, sometimes with the original still visible underneath.
• Tilt the label. PSA's LightHouse logo has an on and off illumination effect as the angle changes, and the background is printed in fugitive ink that dissolves if anyone tries to wash it.

Ask for photographs of the edges and the back of the slab, not just the front. A seller who has nothing to hide will send them. Every listing here is photographed front and back as standard for exactly this reason.

What a population report does and does not tell you

A population report counts how many copies a grader has encapsulated at each grade. The useful number is not the count at your grade but the count above it, which PSA labels Pop Higher. A card with 40 copies at PSA 9 and 900 above it is a common card in a middling grade, whatever the raw number looks like.

Where to look: CGC's population report is open at cgccards.com/population-report and needs no account. PSA's requires a sign in. TAG surfaces population, rank and chronology inside each card's own report. GemRate is the only place to compare populations across graders for the same card.

Two limits worth holding on to. CGC states in its own disclaimer that population figures are not an indicator of value or rarity and should not drive a purchase decision. And a pop report counts slabs, not cards: crossovers and resubmissions inflate the count, and no grader publishes an adjustment for cards that have been cracked out.

Graded cards in stock

Every slab here is one copy, photographed front and back, with the cert number linked to the grader's own lookup.

• PSA graded cards
• CGC graded cards
• TAG graded cards
• All graded slabs