The Complete Guide to PSA Grading: How to Get More PSA 10s

The biggest misconception in card grading is that your cards need to be perfect to get a PSA 10. The truth is, they don’t. The key is to know which flaws PSA actually punishes, and which ones they don’t.

This guide will help you evaluate your cards with more confidence, based on our own results grading over 1,000 cards and receiving more than 65% PSA 10s. It will go through each of the main grading categories: centering, corners, edges, and surface, and provide examples of what cards you should be submitting, and which cards you should not.

Determining Centering: 55/45 Guidelines

Based on PSA guidelines, a PSA 10 card must have 55/45 front centering or better, and 75/25 back centering or better. Honestly, the 75/25 on the back is quite lenient, as even cards that look very off-center still fall within this threshold. But with that said, the following evaluation method can be applied to either the front or back of any card.

Some cards have clearly defined borders, and some do not. You’ll find that centering is a lot easier to measure on the cards that have defined borders.

I’m also not a fan of centering tools or centering apps based on pictures. We are old school and like to just measure with a ruler. I find this makes it much easier to be precise, and this matters if you’re trying to decide if a card is 56/44 or 55/45 (although PSA does sometimes gem cards that are technically a bit outside of 55/45).

Let’s look at this 2018 Bowman Chrome Shohei Ohtani Rookie Card as an example. I’ve marked the borders in blue for reference.

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