Reference
Cardmarket grades a card on seven steps and describes each step in a paragraph you have to click open. This page sets those descriptions out as text, quotes Cardmarket's own rules for specific defects, compares the scale with TCGplayer's, and gives you a four-question checker for a card in your hand.
Cardmarket does describe all seven grades in text, but you have to go looking. Each description is a panel you click open, and its words arrive inside the page's script payload rather than in the page you read: pull the rendered text and you get 9,183 characters with none of the seven descriptions among them. The table above the panels is an image, and it carries the vocabulary and the American column rather than the criteria. This page sets out what the panels say, quotes the defect rules that sit below them in plain text, and marks every place where the two disagree.
The scale
Best to worst. The colour on each code is the one Cardmarket paints on its own offer rows, sampled from a live page.
| Grade | Cardmarket says | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| MTMint | Perfect | Cardmarket asks for a perfect front, no scratches, a perfectly clean surface, and a back you cannot tell from a card out of a fresh booster. A signature or a Grand Prix stamp rules Mint out whatever the card stock looks like. Its Gem Mint note adds that a Mint card may still carry very minor printing imperfections, such as imperfect centring. |
| Our call, not TCGplayer'sCardmarket says that in most cases grading a card Mint makes no sense, and that Near Mint is the safer choice for a card sold to be played with. It does not forbid Mint, so the checker below stopping at Near Mint is our policy and not its rule. TCGplayer does not sell Mint at all. | ||
| NMNear Mint | Booster-Fresh | A card that looks like it has never been played unsleeved. Cardmarket allows a few very small white spots on the border and a few minor spots on the surface, and asks that the surface look clean in daylight. What it does not allow is scratches, at all. It also rules out Near Mint for any card with visible clouding. |
| EXExcellent | Minor wear | A card used for a few games without sleeves. Cardmarket expects the wear to be clearly visible on first inspection and still minor: a couple of white spots at the corners or around the border, perhaps minor scratches you find on a closer look. A crease deep enough to see at first sight rules Excellent out, and because its Good description rules out bends altogether the page puts any crease lower still. |
| Our call, not TCGplayer'sCardmarket separates Excellent from Good by severity and extent, not by how hard the wear is to see, and both descriptions are its own. Where a card could sit in either, we grade down, and that tiebreaker is ours rather than TCGplayer's. | ||
| GDGood | Visible wear | Strong wear all over, from regular play: many white spots on the edges and corners, scratches on the surface, some ingrained dirt. Cardmarket's Good description rules out water damage and bends altogether, which puts a creased or bent card below Good — its Excellent description is looser, allowing a crease you cannot see at first sight, and the page takes the stricter of the two. Its scratch rule puts any scratched card here at best, front or back, however clean the rest of it is. |
| LPLight Played | Severe wear | A card played unsleeved for a long time. Cardmarket sets two conditions: it is clearly legal in a sleeved deck, and nobody has tampered with it. Meet both and the card may look very bad and still be Light Played. A crease, a bend that stays, and water damage all land here as long as both conditions still hold. |
| PLPlayed | Damaged | As bad as regular unsleeved play can leave a card. Cardmarket's test is that you doubt whether it is tournament legal even in a sleeve, and that nobody has tampered with it. A fold that will not flatten, warping past tournament legality, or water damage between the two extremes. |
| POPoor | Destroyed | Damage regular play does not cause. Cardmarket calls a Poor card destroyed: either obviously illegal for tournament play, or tampered with in ways that destroy its worth almost completely. Writing added by a previous owner, tape, a missing piece, a repaired tear, or water damage that puts the card out of tournament play. Cardmarket also rules borders that have been inked, blackened or whitened as Poor, and a Pro Tour or Grand Prix stamped card as Poor however good it looks. A signature it recognises — the artist, Richard Garfield, or a name closely connected to the card — is flagged as signed instead and is not damage; any other signature is Poor. |
Cardmarket paints Played and Poor the same red. The letters carry the difference, so read them.
Cardmarket's own rules
These are not ours and not TCGplayer's. They sit in plain text on Cardmarket's help page, below the grade panels, spread over eighteen alphabetical sections we have taken the grading-relevant ones from. Where one of them names a grade it is more specific than the grade descriptions, so the page follows it and says where the two disagree.
| Situation | Grade |
|---|---|
| Any scratches on the surface | GDGood at best |
| Visible clouding — the surface looks dull with no damage you can point at | EXRules out Near Mint |
| Water damage, card clearly still tournament legal | LPLight Played |
| Water damage, somewhere between the two | PLPlayed |
| Water damage, clearly no longer tournament legal | POPoor |
| Warped so strongly it may not be tournament legal | PLPlayed |
| Borders inked, blackened or whitened | POPoor |
| A Pro Tour or Grand Prix stamp | POPoor, however good the card looks |
| A signature Cardmarket does not recognise as signed | POPoor |
| Manufacturing errors — miscuts, misaligned art, odd text | No effect on the grade |
| Age | No allowance; a 20-year-old card is held to the same criteria |
Cardmarket also declines partial grades: NM− and EX+ in a comment are not a thing it supports. An altered card has to be listed with a photograph of the alteration.
Cross-reference
Cardmarket's table carries a US-Expression column, and its text describes that column as a rough translation of terminology that varies between American stores. It does not claim to map to TCGplayer. Four of its seven terms — Mint, Slightly Played, Played and Poor — are not TCGplayer grades at all, which is where the confusion starts.
| Cardmarket | Cardmarket's US column | Closest TCGplayer grade |
|---|---|---|
| MTMint | MintNot a TCGplayer grade | None — Mint is not sold on TCGplayer |
| NMNear Mint | Near Mint | Near Mint |
| EXExcellent | Slightly Played | ExcellentNot a TCGplayer grade | Lightly Played |
| GDGood | Moderately Played | Very Good | Moderately Played |
| LPLight Played | Played | GoodNot a TCGplayer grade | Heavily Played |
| PLPlayed | Heavily PlayedOur reading differs | Damaged |
| POPoor | PoorNot a TCGplayer grade | Damaged |
No such TCGplayer grade. Theirs is Lightly Played. Cardmarket's own Excellent description names both — "Slightly Played or Lightly Played" — and warns in the same breath not to confuse Lightly Played with the European Light Played, which is the whole of the next section.
No such grade either. TCGplayer lists Near Mint, Lightly Played, Moderately Played, Heavily Played and Damaged, and nothing else.
TCGplayer's bottom grade is Damaged. Played and Poor both land on it, so two Cardmarket grades collapse into one American one.
A real grade, but we put PL at Damaged instead — Cardmarket's own Condition column glosses PL as damaged. That reading is ours, not a mistake on their part.
The second term in three rows comes from an older American condition scale. TCGplayer does not use it, which is what makes the column rough rather than wrong.
The collision
Same two letters on the two largest card marketplaces, near-opposite ends of their scales. Cardmarket flags it itself, inside its Excellent description: not to be confused with the European Light Played. Buy across them on the code alone and you pay Lightly Played money for a Light Played card.
LP on Cardmarket
5th of 7
Light Played
Severe wear
LP on TCGplayer
2nd of 5
Lightly Played
One step under Near Mint
On our mapping a TCGplayer LP card is roughly a Cardmarket EX. If you trade across both, read the full grade name and never the two letters.
Checker
Four questions. In each one pick the worst answer that fits — the answers are a ladder, so a bad card also matches the milder lines above it. Each answer caps how good the card can be, and the lowest cap across the four wins, because a buyer grades a card by its worst visible flaw.
Where Cardmarket publishes a rule for a defect, the answer follows that rule and says so. The millimetre thresholds are TCGplayer's, remapped from their five grades to Cardmarket's seven, because Cardmarket publishes no measurements. Where Cardmarket's grade descriptions and its defect rules disagree, the page takes the stricter of the two and flags it.
Two things to leave out of your answers, and one to count. A manufacturing error — a miscut, a crimp, misaligned art, an ink fault from the printer — does not affect the Cardmarket grade at all, so grade the card as if it were not there. A signature Cardmarket recognises, meaning the artist, Richard Garfield, or a name closely connected to the card, is flagged separately as signed and is not damage either. A Pro Tour or Grand Prix stamp is neither: Cardmarket grades a stamped card Poor however good it looks, so count it under the second question.
Answer the four questions above. The worst flaw sets the grade.
Questions
MT is Mint, NM Near Mint, EX Excellent, GD Good, LP Light Played, PL Played and PO Poor, best to worst. Cardmarket glosses them as perfect, booster-fresh, minor wear, visible wear, severe wear, damaged and destroyed, and it describes each one in a paragraph behind a click on its Card Condition page. Those paragraphs ship inside that page's script payload, so a rendered-text extraction returns none of them. This page sets them out as text.
Pack-fresh to the naked eye. Cardmarket's own word for it is booster-fresh, and its description allows a few very small white spots on the border and a few minor spots on the surface, with the surface looking clean in daylight. What it does not allow is scratches, at all. It adds one more rule: visible clouding, where the surface looks dull with no damage you can point at, rules Near Mint out.
Cardmarket draws it by severity and extent, not by how hard the wear is to see. Excellent is a card used for a few games unsleeved: the wear is clearly visible on first inspection but still minor, a couple of white spots at the corners or around the border. Good is strong wear all over, many white spots, scratches, some ingrained dirt. Its two descriptions leave a band where either would fit, and the tiebreaker there is ours: grade down. Cardmarket also contradicts itself on scratches — its scratch rule makes any scratched card Good at best, while its Excellent description allows minor scratches found on a closer look. The page follows the scratch rule.
No, and the two readings sit at near-opposite ends of their scales. On Cardmarket, LP is Light Played, fifth of seven grades, glossed severe wear. On TCGplayer, LP is Lightly Played, second of five, one step under Near Mint. On our mapping a TCGplayer LP card is roughly a Cardmarket EX. Read the full grade name and never the two letters.
Not always. Under this page's stricter reading it is never better than Light Played. A crease is bend damage, and Cardmarket's Good description rules out bends altogether, so a creased card sits below Good. It becomes Played once you would doubt the card in a sleeved deck, which is the line Cardmarket draws between those two grades, and Poor once it is obviously illegal. TCGplayer is looser — its rule puts a crease at Moderately Played at best, which is Good here — and this page follows Cardmarket, as it does for scratches. Cardmarket is not quite of one mind: its Excellent description allows a crease you cannot see at first sight. Other defects only pull the result lower if their own ceiling is lower, so a crease plus fine scratches is still Light Played, while a crease plus a repaired tear is Poor.
Not on Cardmarket. Its rule is explicit: manufacturing errors such as misaligned art do not count as wear and tear and do not affect the grade, though it asks you to describe the error and add a photograph. TCGplayer is stricter and calls anything past 70/30 centring damaged. If you list on both, the same card can honestly carry two different grades.
Yes, on both sides of the trade. A buyer who opens a card graded one step too high opens a complaint, and that costs the return postage, the refund and the rating. When you buy in, the lower grade is the price you can defend if the card arrives worse than the listing. One step of caution is cheaper than either mistake.
PSA grades a card from 1 to 10 and seals it in a slab, and for cards people collect a PSA 10 usually sells well above a raw Near Mint. Cardmarket's seven grades describe a raw card in a sleeve: the seller assigns the grade, and no independent party checks it before sale. The two scales do not convert, and a card you would call Mint can come back from PSA as an 8.
Sources
Cardmarket publishes a description of each of its seven grades, in panels you click open on its Card Condition page, and eighteen alphabetical sections of rules for specific defects below them. The panels' words ship inside that page's script payload, so a rendered-text extraction of it returns none of the seven. This page sets them out as text and quotes the defect rules beside them. The millimetre thresholds here are TCGplayer's, a detailed public standard with published severity bands, remapped from their five grades to Cardmarket's seven, because Cardmarket publishes no measurements. Where Cardmarket's own text disagrees with itself — its Excellent description allows minor scratches, its scratch rule caps a scratched card at Good — the page takes the stricter reading and says which. Two calls are ours and say so too: the Excellent–Good tiebreaker, and stopping the checker at Near Mint. Checked against the live sources on 9 October 2026.
TCGshopkeeper is not affiliated with Cardmarket, TCGplayer or PSA.
Buying in on Cardmarket? TCGshopkeeper copies the grade a seller has already set on the offer row onto your buyout list, with the price and the quantity. What TCGshopkeeper does