How to Evaluate Cards With Slants
We do submit slanted cards to PSA, when they meet a certain guideline.
One thing that comes up pretty often when we’re evaluating Pokémon cards is slanting. A slanted card is one where the centering isn’t the same from top to bottom or left to right. In other words, the borders shift as you move along the card. I want to be upfront: I don’t work at PSA, so nothing here is inside information on how they officially handle this. What I can share is what we’ve observed across nearly 500 Pokémon submissions, in which we’ve received over 70% PSA 10s.
What A Slant Looks Like
The 2025 Mega Evolution Charizard X ex #125 is about as clear an example of a slanted card as you’ll find. The borders shift noticeably as you move along the card, and in my opinion the centering at the worst point was well outside of PSA’s 55/45 guideline for front centering. It still came back as a PSA 10.
In general, I don’t recommend submitting cards with slants this extreme, but I do think this card serves as a good example to show both what a slant is, and that PSA is willing to give these cards PSA 10s.
When To Submit Slanted Cards
The Pikachu Mega Evolution #277 is a better example to walk through the evaluation process. This one has a more subtle slant. Below, I’ve zoomed in on just the very top and very bottom part of the border. At the top, the left/right centering is nearly perfect, but at the bottom, the left border is noticeably wider than the right border.
Top Part of Border:
Bottom Part of Border:
Our approach is simple. We ignore the favorable end of the slant and measure from the worst point, which in this case is the bottom. In the end, we measured the left/right centering from the marks in the image above at 57/43.
Since that’s outside of PSA’s 55/45 guideline, we decided not to submit it. But if that same worst-case measurement had come in at 55/45 or better, we would have submitted it despite the slant.
For a review on how to measure a card’s centering, read our Complete Guide to PSA Grading.