GRADING ROI
What is a submission actually worth? Enter what the raw card costs you, what the graded copies sell for, and your grading tier. The calculator shows the profit at each outcome and an expected value weighted by real odds. Load any card from the picker to prefill its own population odds and prices.
PSA list prices read 2026-08-17 from psacard.com. Value tier was paused at that read. Specials and bulk rates change; edit the fee to match yours.
Two honesty notes. Gem rates come from cards people already chose to submit, and people submit their cleanest copies, so the real odds on a random raw card run worse than the published rate. And the grade 9 bucket in the source data pools all grading companies, while PSA 10 figures are PSA only. Details on the methodology page.
Is grading Pokemon cards worth it?
Usually not, and that is exactly why the math matters. The grading fee is fixed, so cheap cards lose before they start: a raw card worth ten dollars has to come back a perfect 10 on a card whose PSA 10 sells north of the fee plus costs just to break even. The submissions that work share three traits: a wide gap between the raw and PSA 10 price, a gem rate high enough that the 10 is a realistic outcome rather than a lottery ticket, and a card clean enough to be in that winning fraction.
The gem rate input is the honest core of this calculator. A card that gems 40 percent of the time and pays 5x raw at a 10 is a fundamentally different bet from a card that gems 4 percent and pays 30x. Both can look like winners if you only stare at the PSA 10 price. Weight by the odds and one of them usually stops being a trade.
Calculator questions
Which grading fees does the calculator use?
PSA list prices read from psacard.com on 2026-08-17: Regular $79.99, Express $149, Super Express $349, Walk-Through $599, with the Value tier paused by PSA at that read. PSA changes prices and runs specials, so the fee field stays editable.
Where do the odds come from?
From the card's own PSA population: tens divided by total gradings for the gem odds, nines divided by total for the nine odds. Those are the odds of submitted copies, which run better than the odds of a random raw card, and the calculator says so rather than hiding it.
What selling cost should I enter?
Whatever your real all in cost of selling is: marketplace fee, payment fee, shipping, and supplies. The 13 percent default is an assumption to start from, not a quote of any platform's fee schedule.