Frequently asked questions

GradeX is an AI-powered card grading app for sports cards and trading cards. You scan a card with your phone — front, back, corners, edges — and within about a minute the app returns predicted PSA, BGS, CGC, and TAG grades, a defect map showing every imperfection, a target sell price, and a route into a verified marketplace.

Predictions are derived from Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 with a parallel defect-localisation specialist and self-consistency reruns on borderline cases. A learned calibration offset corrects for any systematic bias against the real grades returned by PSA / BGS / CGC / TAG over time. Most modern cards in good condition predict within half a grade of the actual result, but GradeX predictions are informational only — they do not replace official grading.

Four: PSA (1–10 with half-grades), BGS / Beckett (with subgrades for centering, corners, edges, surface), CGC (with subgrades), and TAG (numeric 1–1000 plus letter grade). Every scan runs all four rubrics against the same raw analysis.

Sports cards (basketball, football, baseball, hockey, soccer) and TCG (Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, One Piece, Lorcana, Yu-Gi-Oh and similar). The AI is instructed to apply the appropriate grading nuances per category — autograph standards, rookie indicators, holo / refractor parallels, slab inspection if the card is already graded.

After capture, an 8-line wizard appears for the front and back. Four red lines snap to the card's outer edges; four green lines mark the inner design border. A leveling slider corrects any residual tilt. Your numbers replace the AI's centering estimate entirely — the AI is told to use them as ground truth.

Yes. On the result page, every defect is shown both as a list item and as a marker on the card. Tap a defect to highlight it on the image; tap Reject to flag it as an AI mistake. When you click Reanalyze, your rejections are serialised into a structured "do not include these" prompt block and the analysis re-runs with that knowledge.

GradeX has four tiers. Free covers manual card entry and vault storage. Starter is $10 per month and includes 10 AI scans plus 5 target-price analyses. Pro is $25 per month and includes 50 AI scans plus 25 analyses. All Star is $75 per month and includes 300 AI scans plus 50 analyses. Pro and All Star also offer annual billing at a discount. Extra scan and analysis credits can be bought any time on top of any paid plan.

Trades are completely free. Sales carry a flat 2% platform fee, snapshotted at offer-accept time so a future rate change cannot retroactively alter historical payouts. Stripe processing fees still apply on top per Stripe's standard schedule.

Verified users only. Verification reduces fraud and abuse. Unverified accounts can scan and grade cards, save to a vault, and run target price analyses, but cannot list, buy, or trade until they're verified.

Sellers connect a Stripe Connect Express account once. The buyer pays via Stripe Checkout; the platform fee is automatically deducted; the rest is routed to the seller's connected account. Stripe pays out to the seller's bank on its standard schedule (typically 2 business days after capture).

Either party can file a dispute within 14 days of the transaction completing. Disputes go to admin review with the original transaction details, evidence, and message history; the resolution can be a full buyer refund, partial refund, full release to the seller, or no action. Refunds reverse the application fee too.

Card images are sent to Anthropic's API solely to generate the grade prediction; Anthropic's terms prohibit them from training models on API data. Aggregate, anonymised pattern data (e.g. "holo silvering on this manufacturer") is fed back into the prompt as context for future scans — never your individual photos or personal details.

No. GradeX is independent. Comparisons and grade predictions are based on each grader's publicly documented standards. Official grade certificates can only be issued by the graders themselves.

Yes. The AI detects the slab and adjusts the analysis. For graded cards, GradeX confirms the visible certified grade, transcribes the cert number, and surfaces target sell prices for that specific PSA / BGS / CGC grade tier.

The capture and centering steps work offline since they run entirely on-device. The AI grading itself requires an internet connection. Background jobs continue server-side even if your phone goes to sleep, so closing the app between submission and result is safe.

Visit your profile and request verification. Verification is currently invite-based for early users and is free.