Reading a Graded Card's Label: PSA, BGS, CGC and the Rest

A graded card’s label is a summary, and the certificate number printed on it is the key to the grader’s record of the card. PSA’s guarantee is its “assurance that we stand behind our opinions as to the authenticity and/or grade of each item we encapsulate, as reflected on each PSA label”; on my reading, the label states that opinion and the look-up by its number is how a buyer checks that it still stands. The six graders this post reads (PSA, Beckett, CGC, SGC, TAG and ACE) each publish a look-up by that number, and PSA’s guarantee, which covers a card’s grade and its authenticity, applies only if the card “had an active certification number on the cert lookup feature of the PSA website at the time it was purchased” by the person making the claim.¹² The words beside the grade change what the number means: a PSA “Mint 9oc” is a 9 with centering below the 9’s standard, a CGC label reading 9.5 is either a legacy Gem Mint, which CGC now counts as a 10, or a current Mint+, which sits below one, and the top of the scale is worded differently at each grader: CGC, SGC and TAG grade a Pristine 10 apart from a Gem Mint 10, while Beckett’s only 10 is Pristine, its Gem Mint is a 9.5, and its black label sets a Pristine 10 with four 10 subgrades apart from the rest.^3456789 The numbers themselves differ by grader: SGC’s are 7 digits on black labels and “11 characters (XXXXXXX-XXX)” on green and white ones, TAG’s are “typically 1 Letter followed by 7 Numbers,” and ACE’s own records carry six and five digits.^10111213 I ran a Python copy of the label reader in my app, Kiradex, over sixteen synthetic labels built from those published formats, two of them in layouts no grader page shows: it read 3 of 16 whole, cut 2 certificates short, and did not recognize 4 slabs at all, every ACE label among them.¹⁴¹⁵ This is each grader’s label as its own pages describe it, with the dates of the redesigns, what a collector checks, and the brief that fixes the reader.

TL;DR

• The number is the key, not the paper. Each of the six graders this post reads publishes a look-up by certificate number. PSA’s guarantee runs through that look-up and “does not apply to Items that arrive with tampered or counterfeit holders and/or labels (regardless of certification status).”¹²
• A grade is a number and the words beside it. PSA defines six qualifiers (OC, ST, PD, OF, MK, MC) and an “AUTHENTIC” outcome with no number; seven of its nine no-grade codes can still lead to a holder labeled Authentic or Authentic Altered, at the grader’s discretion and on the submitter’s request, and PSA says it “does not always print the term “Altered” on the label itself” for technical reasons.¹⁶¹¹⁵ CGC’s current scale has its own “Mint+ 9.5” below Gem Mint 10, while its legacy Gem Mint 9.5 now counts as a 10.⁴⁵
• Label dates come from the grader’s own announcements. PSA’s dated changes are February 12, 2008, November 12, 2013, June 14, 2017 (the LightHouse label), January 1, 2019, May 14, 2024 (a new holder) and June 19, 2024 (a blue label for autograph-only items); CGC’s new label was announced June 20, 2023. No PSA label redesign dated 2023 was found on psacard.com.^{17181920212223}
• Security features are published by PSA and CGC; TAG describes a scan check. PSA lists fugitive ink, a UV logo pattern, the LightHouse logo and a QR code; CGC lists “microprinting, UV ink, holographic foil and a unique certification number and barcode”; TAG puts a Proof Mark behind its QR code. Beckett gives one sentence, the SGC pages read here describe none, and ACE’s describe only an address check.^242511262728
• Beckett is read from archive copies, and its outage began earlier than the centering post said. The status page is dated October 2, 2026, but an archive capture of September 19, 2026 already shows Beckett’s platforms offline, while its card look-up was live in a capture of August 19.²⁹³⁰³¹
• What this gives Kiradex. The brief: read each grader’s certificate in its published shape (SGC’s hyphen, TAG’s letter, ACE’s five and six digits), keep the words beside the grade (qualifier, designation, Pristine or Gem), offer each grader’s own look-up as a link and never fetch it, say plainly what was and was not read, and offer only the grades each grader gives.^14323334

1. What a label is for

A slab is a sealed case with a printed label inside it (or, at TAG, text printed into the case itself), and, on my reading, the label is a short summary of a record that lives with the grader. Two graders say in so many words that the number belongs to one card. PSA’s glossary: “PSA gives every graded card a certification number,” and its FAQ calls the Cert ID “the unique number found on your PSA-graded label”. CGC’s 2020 holder article: “a unique certification number identifies a card,” and its label today carries “a unique certification number and barcode.”^3353625 The others say less. TAG’s process page says “Unique ID numbers are assigned to both the cards and the order” at its purchase-and-submission step, without saying that this ID is the certificate number; Beckett’s FAQ names “a specific id and a bar coded serial number”; the SGC and ACE pages read here do not say.³⁷²⁶ PSA puts the number on before the card is graded: the fifth step of its process reads “Order ID stickers with unique certification numbers are placed on each Card Saver in the order,” and the research, the grading and the printed label follow.³⁸ The copy editor in my own app already tells the collector the same thing in its footer: “The certificate number is printed on the case’s label. It is that case’s alone.”³⁴

Three things the graders say make the number, not the paper, the thing to check.

PSA’s guarantee runs through the look-up. It applies “provided that the Card had an active certification number on the cert lookup feature of the PSA website at the time it was purchased” by the person making the claim, and it “does not apply to Items that arrive with tampered or counterfeit holders and/or labels (regardless of certification status).”¹

The graders say plainly that slabs are attacked. PSA’s guarantee page: “some unscrupulous people occasionally try to defraud collectors by removing Items from PSA holders, replacing them with lower grade, altered, and/or counterfeit Items, and then resealing the holders. In some cases, they may also tamper with a genuine label and/or replace it with a fraudulent label altogether.”¹ TAG keeps a page for numbers it has withdrawn, which says “This TAG Certification number is no longer active.” and lists seven reasons, among them “The slab was cracked, altered, or resealed.” and “The certification was voluntarily surrendered.”³⁹¹⁵

Every grader offers a check by number. PSA’s communications page (an undated entry) says its “online Certification Verification page and PSA app allow customers to scan the barcode on their item and verify its authenticity.”³⁸ CGC’s 2020 holder article sent collectors to “CGCcards.com/verify.”³⁶ ACE’s site offers to “Lookup an Ace Grading graded collectible by certification number,” and its authentication page tells collectors scanning its labels to “check the URL in your browser” and names the address, “https://acegrading.com”.⁴⁰²⁸ Beckett, SGC and TAG each have a look-up page of their own, set out grader by grader below.³¹¹⁰⁴¹

What the fields are

No grader’s pages read here lay out every field on its label. Beckett’s FAQ and CGC’s 2023 announcement each name what the label carries in one sentence, and the others name fields in passing, so the list below is assembled from what each one’s pages name, and PSA’s part of it is my reading of its guarantee.^1262312

• Year and set. PSA’s guarantee excludes “mechanical errors” such as a label whose date “does not match the date printed on the Item,” which places a date on the label; Beckett’s FAQ says “Each label will feature the set name, the grade and a specific id and a bar coded serial number”; ACE’s certificate record lists “Release Year” and “Set.”¹²⁶¹²
• The card, its number and its variety. The same PSA clause covers a mislabel “with respect to the Item’s specification, set, variation, or parallel”; CGC’s 2023 label “provides a detailed description of the card”; ACE’s record lists “Name,” “Number,” “Language” and “Variant.”¹²³¹²
• The grade, as words and a number. Since PSA’s change of February 12, 2008, “the grade number (8) will now appear directly below the description of the grade (NM-MT) on the right side of the label.”¹⁷
• A qualifier or a designation. PSA’s OC, ST, PD, OF, MK and MC go with the number, and its glossary writes one joined to it, “Mint 9oc”; ACE’s Off-Center qualifier means “appending OC to the grade”; PSA’s “AUTHENTIC” stands where no number is given; CGC “will print Authentic Altered in the grade box”.¹⁶³⁴²⁴
• The certificate number and a barcode. Beckett’s label carries “a bar coded serial number”; CGC’s “a unique certification number and barcode”; PSA’s glossary says of the certification number, “It can be found on the PSA label,” and its app scans “the barcode on their item”.^2625338 Which side of the label carries the number is stated on only one saved page: CGC’s 2020 holder article, “On the back of the label, a unique certification number identifies a card.”³⁶ PSA’s pages, Beckett’s FAQ and CGC’s current holder page do not say; TAG puts the number “left of the QR code”.^24262511
• A QR code on the back of the label at PSA (since the 2017 label) and on CGC’s current label, as its holder page describes it; CGC’s 2020 article names a QR code without placing it.²⁴²⁵³⁶

So I read a PSA label as carrying at least a year, a set, the card and its variety, beside the grade and the certificate number; no PSA page read here gives a field list.¹⁴³

The fields the graders’ own pages name, drawn as generic boxes with placeholder text; TAG prints into the case instead of on paper.⁴⁴

2. Each grader’s label, from its own pages

I read each grader’s own pages on October 5, 2026 and saved them; where a grader’s page is a script that builds its text in the browser (SGC), a headless browser rendered it. Pages the centering post saved the day before are reused and dated October 4.⁴⁵ Before quoting, I checked who publishes each page: PSA’s pages carry “© 2026 Collectors Holdings, Inc.”; CGC’s carry “Certified Guaranty Company, LLC” and “CGC is part of the Certified Collectibles Group”; SGC’s “SGC, LLC”; TAG’s site is Technical Authentication & Grading’s; ACE’s is Ace Grading Ltd’s, registered in England and Wales.⁴⁵ Search results also turned up collector tools and seller sites with grader-like names; they are leads only, and nothing below rests on them.⁴⁶

Four kinds of page could not be read. Beckett’s site is offline, so Beckett is read from its status page and from Wayback Machine captures, each named with its date. The research notes record that PSA’s certificate pages and population report, CGC’s certificate look-up, and ACE’s look-up index and population report answered automated requests with HTTP 403 and a Cloudflare bot check; nothing was done to get past it, so those pages were not reached, and the folder keeps no copy of those challenge responses. The one file saved under PSA’s population report is a different barrier: PSA’s sign-in page, described below. SGC’s look-up form carries a reCAPTCHA; its text was read and the form was not used.^4547484910

PSA

How a card gets its label. PSA’s process, in its own steps: “Order ID stickers with unique certification numbers are placed on each Card Saver in the order”; “Your cards are researched so they can be properly identified on the PSA label”; “PSA’s LightHouse labels are printed showing each card’s information and grade”; “The card and LightHouse label are sonically sealed in PSA’s tamper-evident holder” for security.³⁸

The grade words. PSA’s standards pair each number with a short descriptor, and PSA’s 2008 label article shows one of them on the label with its number: “the grade number (8) will now appear directly below the description of the grade (NM-MT)”. So I read the list below as the words a PSA label prints with the number:¹⁶¹⁷¹⁵

Half grades exist only in a band: “Cards that exhibit high-end qualities within each particular grade, between PSA 2 and PSA 9, may achieve a half-point increase.”¹⁶ I read that as no 9.5 at PSA; FR 1.5 is a grade of its own in the list above.¹⁶

The six qualifiers. PSA defines six two-letter qualifiers, and four of them share one rule.¹⁶¹⁵

• OC, off center: “Cards that are off center will either by designated “OC” or will have a numerical grade that reflects the minimum centering allowed for the grade.”¹⁶
• ST, staining: “Cards with staining will either by designated “ST” or will have a numerical grade that reflects the minimum staining allowed for the grade.”¹⁶
• PD, print defect: “Cards with printing defects will either be designated “PD” or will have a numerical grade that reflects the minimum print defects allowed for the grade.”¹⁶
• OF, out of focus: “Cards that are out of focus or out of register with either be designated “OF” or will have a numerical grade that reflects the minimum focus standards allowed for the grade.”¹⁶
• MK, marks: “Any and all cards with writing, ink marks, pencil marks, etc. or evidence of the impression left from the act of writing will be designated “MK.”“¹⁶
• MC, miscut: “Any and all cards that exhibit an atypical cut for the issue, which may result in portions of the subject card being cut off or more than one card being visible, will be designated “MC.”“¹⁶

The wording varies between “by” and “be” in PSA’s own text, and the quotations keep it. The glossary writes a qualified grade with the letters joined to the number: a card that meets the standard for Mint 9 but falls short on centering “would be designated Mint 9oc.”³ It does not say how the label spaces it. On my reading of the rule’s two halves together, a PSA 9 with OC is a different statement from a PSA 9 without it: the plain 9 meets the 9’s centering, and the OC card does not.¹⁶

When there is no number. PSA’s standards name two outcomes that carry no numerical grade:¹⁶

• AUTHENTIC (grade code N0): “This means that PSA is only certifying that the item is genuine, without a numerical grade.” The same entry gives the reasons it may happen: “This may be due to the existence of an alteration, one with malice or otherwise, a major defect or the original submitter may have requested that PSA encapsulate the card without a grade.” And it sums the label up: “The “Authentic” label means that the item, in our opinion, is real but nothing more.”¹⁶
• ALTERED AUTHENTIC (AA): “This means that while PSA is certifying that the item is genuine, due to the existence of alterations, the item cannot receive a numerical grade.” Such items are “genuine with the presence of some type of alteration,” and the designation “is used on a case-by-case basis, space permitting, and “AA” must be listed on the submission form as the desired minimum grade.”¹⁶

The nine no-grade codes, and what each lets happen to the card. PSA lists nine codes, N1 Evidence of Trimming through N9 Don’t Grade, under one heading: “If your card is returned without a numeric grade in a card saver sleeve, that determination was made based on one of the following reasons”. So each code is a reason a card comes back ungraded. Each code’s own text then says whether the card can still be encapsulated, and the nine split four ways:¹⁶¹⁵

• Five can be encapsulated as Authentic Altered: N1 Evidence of Trimming, N2 Evidence of Restoration, N3 Evidence of Recoloration, N5 Altered Stock and N7 Evidence of Cleaning each say that “this designation can qualify for encapsulation as “Authentic Altered” at the grader’s discretion and if “AA” is listed on the submission form as the desired minimum grade.”
• Two can be encapsulated as Authentic: N6 Minimum Size Requirement, a card “significantly undersized according to factory specifications,” “can qualify for encapsulation as “Authentic” only,” and N8 Miscut, where “the factory cut is abnormal for the issue,” “can qualify for encapsulation as “Authentic”,” each “at the grader’s discretion and if “Auth” is listed on the submission form as the desired minimum grade.”
• One never: N4 Questionable Authenticity, a card that “appears to be counterfeit,” “would never qualify for encapsulation under any circumstance”.
• One not, unless the decision is reversed: N9 Don’t Grade “does not qualify for encapsulation,” but “If additional information from two or more verified or hobby-approved resources are provided for the issue, the decision could be reversed upon resubmittal.”

PSA’s FAQ gives the default for the same codes: an item rejected for trimming, restoration, recoloration, questionable authenticity, altered stock or cleaning “will be returned not encapsulated,” and items that receive N6, N8 or N9 “will not be charged grading.”³⁵ The standards add the route the FAQ leaves out: a card returned under seven of the nine codes can reach a holder, on the grader’s judgment and the submitter’s request on the form. Neither page says whether the code itself is printed on such a label.¹⁶³⁵

What an AUTHENTIC or AUTHENTIC ALTERED label can therefore mean, in PSA’s words. An AUTHENTIC label is a card PSA calls “real but nothing more,” for a reason PSA’s texts name: “an alteration, one with malice or otherwise,” “a major defect,” a submitter’s request “that PSA encapsulate the card without a grade,” or, through N6 and N8, a card “significantly undersized according to factory specifications” or one whose “factory cut is abnormal for the issue”.¹⁶ An AUTHENTIC ALTERED label is a card PSA judged “genuine with the presence of some type of alteration,” the route N1, N2, N3, N5 and N7 leave open.¹⁶ And the first can stand for the second. PSA’s guarantee “does not differentiate between the “Authentic” and “Authentic Altered” designations,” because “PSA does not always print the term “Altered” on the label itself for technical reasons (e.g., such as character and spacing limitations)”, and it says items labeled “Authentic” “must be viewed as potentially interchangeable with “Authentic Altered”“.¹ The standards page drops the “potentially” and keeps the scope: the “Authentic” only designation “is to be considered interchangeable with “Authentic Altered”” for the purposes of PSA’s guarantee.¹⁶ So an AUTHENTIC label alone does not tell a collector whether the card was altered, and, on my reading, the standards’ “space permitting” for AA and the guarantee’s “character and spacing limitations” give the same reason from two pages.¹⁶¹

How PSA names Pokémon sets. PSA publishes no naming rule that I found, so this is my reading of three of its own pages.⁵⁰⁵¹⁵²

• CardFacts heads its Base Set entries “1999 Nintendo Pokemon Game,” and a card page in that set carries a heading in capitals that begins “1999 POKEMON GAME 74” and goes on with the card’s name and 1ST EDITION: year, game, number, card, variety. The page does not call it label text; I read it as the wording a label carries.⁵⁰
• Japanese sets carry “Japanese” inside the set name, in two spellings on PSA’s own pages: CardFacts “2011 Nintendo Pokemon Japanese Black & White Psycho Drive” and the price guide “2020 Pokémon Japanese S Promo.”⁵¹⁵²
• So, on my reading of its CardFacts heading, a PSA label’s set text is not the set’s printed name: for Base Set it would be “Pokemon Game,” not “Base Set.” An app that matches a label’s set text against English set names would not find it for those sets, which section 6 traces in the app’s code.⁵⁰⁵³

Label generations, from PSA’s dated articles.^171819202122

The label’s color says what was certified. Red is the item and its grade; blue, from June 19, 2024, is the autograph only.²² Before January 1, 2019, PSA/DNA’s encapsulated autographs used blue labels too, so on my reading a blue PSA label’s meaning depends on when it was made.²⁰²² PSA’s 2019 article adds a test that, on my reading, fits red labels made from January 1, 2019 until the blue label began on June 19, 2024: “If they see an autographed card with the designation ‘trading card’ on the LightHouse label, that means that PSA has only authenticated the autograph.”²⁰

Before 2008. No PSA page I found describes earlier labels; the 2008 article says only that the new labels “contain the same general information”.¹⁷

Security features, as PSA publishes them. PSA’s security page lists, for the front of the LightHouse label, a “PSA LightHouse logo with on/off illumination effect,” “Classic PSA red trim connects to LightHouse,” and a “Fugitive ink graphic pattern to prevent label washing”; for the back, a “PSA logo with UV logo pattern,” the LightHouse logo, the fugitive ink, and a “QR Code for instant access to Cert Verification”.²⁴ The 2017 article explains the ink: “The same technology used on checks to prevent check washing, fugitive ink will dissolve and wash away when exposed to cleaning chemicals. Each label is adorned both front and back with this fugitive ink.” It adds that “These features come in addition to other covert security features,” which it does not describe.¹⁹ The security page dates the label’s upgrade: “In 2017, PSA enhanced the security features found on the label used inside the PSA holder.”²⁴

The holder. “Tamper-evident means that if someone does attempt to violate the holder, it will leave some evidence that the holder has been compromised.” PSA says that “Since 1991, PSA has utilized a tamper-evident holder” to encapsulate collectibles.³⁵

Pictures on the record. PSA images cards and uploads them “to its online Certification Verification site,” which it calls “extremely useful for collectors looking to verify the details of an item, including its cert number, before making a purchase.”³⁵

Looking a number up. The look-up page is psacard.com/cert, linked from 22 of the 23 PSA pages saved for this post; the 23rd is the population-report file described below, which has no links at all.²⁴⁵⁴¹⁵ PSA’s own pages link single certificates as /cert/<number>: the CardFacts page for one Base Set card links 231 times to that form, for 201 distinct numbers, every one of them eight digits, in its table of recorded sales.⁵⁰⁵⁴¹⁵ That is a count on one saved page, not a format PSA publishes. A longer form, https://www.psacard.com/cert/<number>/psa, appeared in search-index results, which are not saved, and on no saved PSA page. The research notes record that the look-up page and an address of the longer form answered an automated request on October 5, 2026 with HTTP 403 and a Cloudflare bot check; no copy of either response was kept, and no certificate record was read here.⁴⁷ PSA also runs a public API that answers one question: “We currently offer access to data from Cert Verification for single item searches by cert number.” It needs a token made from the user’s own PSA login; its sample number is the eight-character 00000000; and a number “containing non-numeric or too few characters” comes back as “Invalid CertNo”.⁵⁵

A wrong label is fixed free. “PSA will correct any mislabeled item(s) free of charge,” through a Label Correction Request.³⁵ The guarantee itself “does not cover clerical errors, or what we call “mechanical errors,”” so a wrong label is a correction, not a claim.¹

The population report. PSA’s own description, in an undated market report by Joe Orlando: “a tally of every single card we have ever graded and encapsulated,” broken down “by set, player and grade.” And its limit: “The population numbers do not represent ALL CARDS IN EXISTENCE, they merely represent the ones that have been graded by PSA. The numbers also do not include all the cards that have been rejected for evidence of alteration, restoration or questionable authenticity.”⁵⁶ The report itself, at psacard.com/pop, was not reached. The research notes record that it answered an automated request with HTTP 403 and a Cloudflare bot check. The one file saved under its name is not that response and not the report: it is PSA’s sign-in page. Its own contents say so: the route it carries is the sign-in page, signin?b=psa&r= followed by the address psacard.com/pop, encoded, which I read as the address to return to after signing in; the page script it loads is the sign-in page’s; and it has no title and no visible text. So the report sat behind a bot check, as the notes record it, or behind a sign-in, as the saved file shows it, and either way it was not read.⁴⁷

Beckett (BGS)

The site is offline, so Beckett is read from the archive. Beckett’s status page, dated October 2, 2026, says that “we detected suspicious technical activity and, out of caution, took our platforms offline,” that “The extended downtime reflects the time needed to conduct a thorough forensic investigation,” and that “Core certification, grade records, and historical population databases remain intact and uncompromised.”²⁹ Services return in phases, and the look-up is in the first: “Phase 1: Customer Accounts, Online Submission Center, Certificate Look-up and Pop Reports”.²⁹ Requests on October 5 for Beckett’s grading scale and card look-up were redirected to that maintenance site.²⁹⁴⁵ Every Beckett fact below therefore comes from a Wayback Machine capture, named by its date, and may differ when the site returns.

What the label says. Beckett’s FAQ, in the capture of March 26, 2025: “A label will run partially across the top of the holder. Each label will feature the set name, the grade and a specific id and a bar coded serial number.”²⁶ The overall grade is worked out from “the 4 sub grades on the front label of the card holder,” so, on my reading, a Beckett label with subgrades carries five numbers, and the overall is the grade.²⁶

Label errors are the one dispute Beckett takes. “Disputed grades on cards are limited to typographical errors on the label (i.e., the wrong set name).”²⁶

Security, in Beckett’s words, is one sentence: “Extreme precautions have been taken to prevent counterfeiting of the label and the holder.” No Beckett page saved describes the features.²⁶

The black label, from November 28, 2014. Beckett’s post of that date, read from a capture of August 16, 2022: “A card worthy of four “10” subgrades is worthy of a special label. Starting today, each card that reaches this quad-10 level will receive a special black label showing that the ultimate grade has been reached.” It goes on: “The black label is for modern cards only,” and “not valid for any BVG cards (1980 and older).”⁹ The post frames it against “the elusive BGS Pristine 10,” and Beckett’s scale has no other 10: its top grades are “Pristine 10” and “Gem Mint 9.5.”⁹⁸ So, on my reading, Beckett’s split at the top is between two labels on one grade: a Pristine 10 with four 10 subgrades, on black, and a Pristine 10 on the standard label.⁹⁸

Gold and silver labels. On the saved Beckett pages, a label color other than black comes up only in a comment thread, not in a post: under the 2014 black-label post, a comment signed “Mike” and dated November 29, 2014 says “BGS 9.5’s and 10’s will always be Gold,” unless a 10 has four 10 subgrades, which takes the black label. The page does not identify the commenter; the same name signs three comments in that thread, one of them answering a relabeling question for BGS and another praising BGS. Beyond that comment, gold labels are described only on secondary sites, and no saved Beckett page mentions a silver one, so this post does not set out a color scheme for Beckett’s other grades.⁹⁴⁶

Grading services open, in two saved copies of the maintenance page. Asked “Which grading services are currently available?”, the September 19, 2026 capture answers: “Base (with subgrades), Standard, and Express are currently available through the temporary submission form.” It adds that “Availability may change”.³⁰ The same page as saved on October 4, 2026, when beckett.com’s grading pages redirected to it, answers the same question: “Express is currently available through the temporary submission form,” and, asked why Base and Standard are unavailable, “Base and Standard card grading submissions are temporarily paused as we focus on existing orders and maintaining estimated turnaround times.”⁵⁷ So on October 4 only Express was open to new submissions. Whether Standard and Express labels carry subgrades is not stated in either copy.³⁰⁵⁷

Looking a number up. The card look-up, live in the capture of August 19, 2026: “Verify the validity of Beckett certificates by entering the cert number,” with a choice of BGS, BVG or BCCG, and an invitation to sellers: “You can link directly to this page from your auction ads of eBay and other auction sites.”³¹ The page is a form, with fields named item_type and item_id in its source; no Beckett page read here gives a web address that carries a certificate number.³¹

The number’s format and place: “a specific id and a bar coded serial number.” No Beckett page read here gives its length, and the FAQ does not say which side of the label carries it.²⁶ (The test in my app uses a ten-digit placeholder.)⁵⁸

The population report, in the 2025 FAQ: “Our Population Report is available at no extra charge. Cards graded by Beckett Grading Services can be verified on our Graded Card Look Up site.” And: “It is updated daily”.²⁶

The grades, by the archived grading scale of May 3, 2026, run from “Poor 1” to “Pristine 10,” with “Gem Mint 9.5” the grade below the top; Beckett has no Gem Mint 10. The black label is not a separate grade but a label for four 10 subgrades.⁸⁹

CGC Cards

The 2023 label. On June 20, 2023, the Certified Collectibles Group announced that “In July, CCG will combine CGC Trading Cards® and Certified Sports Guaranty® (CSG®) into CGC Cards,” with “a sleek new label that blends seamlessly with cards.” The label “provides a detailed description of the card, along with its grade, its unique CGC certification number and a QR code to facilitate quick verification.”²³

The Pristine 10 label. The same announcement promised “a lux, gold label worthy of the chase grade” for Pristine 10.²³ Today’s scale: “All cards that merit a CGC Pristine 10 grade will receive a special CGC Cards Pristine 10 label.”⁴

CGC describes its Pristine 10 two ways on one page. The label section says the label is for “cards that are flawless under 10-times magnification”; the grade text says “A Pristine 10 is a virtually flawless card to the naked eye.” Both sentences are on the grading-scale page as saved; I quote them as written and do not reconcile them.⁴

The grade changes that came with the label. “Cards previously graded Gem Mint 9.5 are exactly equivalent to Gem Mint 10 under the updated grading scale”; “The Perfect 10 grade, which was seldom used, will no longer be assigned”; “Sub-Grades will also no longer be offered.”²³ The scale keeps a legacy key: “CGC Trading Cards Gem Mint 9.5” and “CSG Gem Mint 9.5” map to “CGC Cards Gem Mint 10,” and both Perfect 10s are a “Retired grade; retains Perfect 10 status”.⁴

So an older CGC label can read 9.5 and mean 10. CGC’s help center says collectors can keep their Gem Mint 9.5s, “and they will be considered Gem Mint 10s in Verify CGC Cards Certification, the CGC Cards Population Report and the CGC Cards Registry,” without reholdering.⁵

And a current CGC label can read 9.5 and mean something else. Today’s scale has its own Mint+ 9.5, “a card that displays premium eye appeal for a Mint card,” below Gem Mint 10.⁴ So “9.5” on a CGC label is either a Gem Mint, now a 10, or a Mint+, below a 10. On the label itself the words beside it, GEM MINT or MINT+, tell which, and so, on my reading, does the kind of label: Gem Mint 9.5 belongs to the CGC Trading Cards and CSG labels, which CGC says “are no longer being offered,” and its 2023 announcement says a Gem Mint 9.5 reholdered onto the new CGC Cards label “will receive the CGC Cards Gem Mint 10 grade”.⁵²³ CGC’s current list of twenty grades for standard cards:⁴¹⁵

The 2020 label. CGC Trading Cards’ holder article of July 13, 2020: “If requested, CGC Trading Cards provides Sub-Grades, which give a more nuanced description of a card’s condition”; “On the back of the label, a unique certification number identifies a card”; “A QR code enables you to quickly look up a card and its images at CGCcards.com/verify.”³⁶ On my reading, a CGC slab labeled between 2020 and the 2023 change may carry subgrades, and one labeled after it does not. The 2020 article is the only saved CGC page that says which side carries the certificate number; the 2023 announcement and today’s holder page name the number without placing it.³⁶²³²⁵

Designations instead of a number. “Authentic AU” is “used for cards that are authentic and unaltered but cannot receive a numeric grade”; for “Authentic Altered AA,” “CGC Cards will print Authentic Altered in the grade box if a card is authentic but has been altered”; “Authentic ART” is “used for cards with custom art applied to the surface.”⁴

A label’s color carries the guarantee. CGC’s guarantee says a collectible “has not been overgraded,” and the same clause makes an exception by label color: “Grade is NOT guaranteed for cards encapsulated with CGC’s green Qualified Grade Label”. (The guarantee lists other exclusions too, for autographs among them.)⁵⁹

Security features, as CGC publishes them. “To prevent against counterfeiting, the CGC Cards label features microprinting, UV ink, holographic foil and a unique certification number and barcode.” The case is “ultrasonically-welded” and “resists impacts and tampering,” and “On the back of the label, a QR code enables you to quickly look up a card and its images on the CGC Cards website.”²⁵

Looking a number up. The tool is at https://www.cgccards.com/certlookup/, and single certificates appear in search indexes at https://www.cgccards.com/certlookup/<number>/, with a ten-digit example in a search-index title (the title was seen in search results, not on a saved page). The research notes record that both answered an automated request on October 5, 2026 with HTTP 403 and a Cloudflare bot check; they were not reached.⁴⁸ No CGC page read here gives a certificate format.⁴³

The population report is organized “by game, era and set” for trading-card games. Its disclaimer: “Census / Population Reports only reflect the quantities and types of collectibles previously graded by the CCG Companies, and are not an indicator of value or rarity.”⁶⁰ When a card is not found there, CGC says to enter the certification number at its verify tool, where “Below the card images, you will find a link to see your card in the CGC Cards Population Report.”⁶¹

SGC

Two certificate formats, by label color. SGC’s look-up page: “For black labels, enter all 7 digits. For green and white labels, enter all 11 characters (XXXXXXX-XXX).”¹⁰

The look-up is a form with a reCAPTCHA, at gosgc.com/cert-code-lookup, and no SGC page read here gives a web address that carries a certificate code.¹⁰ SGC’s app offers the same check: “Use the Cert Verification feature to access high-resolution images and look up important information about your SGC cards.”⁶²

Label fields and security features: not described on the SGC pages read. I rendered SGC’s scale, services, app, support and population pages, and none lists what the label prints or what protects it. Descriptions of SGC’s holder and label colors beyond the look-up page’s black, green and white are on secondary sites only, and this post leaves them out.²⁷⁴⁶

The grade words. SGC’s scale names its grades as “10 PRI” (Pristine), “10 GM” (Gem), “9.5” (MINT+), “8.5” (NM/MT+), “7” (NRMT) and so on; its two 10s are separate grades.⁶

The population report is a set search, with a note: “With over 28 years of data included in the SGC Pop Report, inconsistencies may be present.”⁶³

TAG

No paper label. “Say goodbye to distracting paper flips. Instead, the TAG grades and data are permanently inscribed directly inside the slab.”⁶⁴ TAG’s process page calls it “UV-cured text inside the slab, as well as the QR code to access the card’s DIG report and Proof Authentication features for authenticity verification”.³⁷

Where the number is, and what it looks like. “Simply locate the card’s CERT# (left of the QR code),” and “The CERT# format is typically 1 Letter followed by 7 Numbers.”¹¹ The cert-search page says “Enter any card’s 8 digit CERT # below”.⁴¹ And TAG’s help center: “All TAG Grading certification numbers are a mix of numbers and letters which are generated randomly.”⁶⁵ Those three descriptions are all TAG’s own, and they are not fully consistent: a letter and seven numbers is eight characters, but not eight digits, and “a mix” allows other arrangements.¹¹⁴¹⁶⁵

The look-up address. TAG’s cert-search page builds it in its own script, const TAG = "https://my.taggrading.com/card/";, followed by the number typed.⁴¹ No record was fetched for this post.

Checking the slab itself. “Locate the Proof Mark on the back of the slab, directly behind the QR code,” and scan it with the free Proof Authentication app; “Every Proof Mark is confirmed & scanned before leaving the TAG facility.”¹¹

A withdrawn number says so. “This TAG Certification number is no longer active.” The page lists seven reasons, from “The slab was tampered with or compromised.” to “The certification was voluntarily surrendered.”³⁹¹⁵

Two 10s, and a 1,000-point scale; on my reading, every card is scored on it, and the score is shown in full with one report tier. TAG’s scale gives its Pristine 10 a score of 990 to 1000 and its Gem Mint 10 950 to 989, and “Half points are included on every grade level except for between 9 and 10.”⁷ TAG describes its grading system as scoring on the 1,000-point scale: it “scores on a precise 1000 point scale & translates into an industry standard 1-10 Grade,” and its process page says the system generates “overall scores for the card on a 1-10 and 1000-point TAG Score scale.”⁶⁴³⁷ What reaches the owner depends on the report tier, in the home page’s own words: “Standard DIGs focus on the core defects that impacted the grade, aka the “DINGS.” DIG Plus Reports breakdown the card into further detail with precise 3 digit scoring.” The same page says “Slabs graded with DIG Report Plus receive a precise 1000 pt TAG Score,” and the DIG page says the leaderboard rank “is only available to cards which have been graded via the TAG S service as a 3 digit score is needed”.⁶⁴⁶⁶ TAG does not say in so many words that every card is scored or that a standard report hides the score; both are my reading of those sentences.

The population report is at my.taggrading.com/pop-report, with a Pokémon category linked from the taggrading.com pages saved; it was not fetched.⁶⁷

ACE

Three label types. ACE names “Standard,” “Colour Match” and “Ace” labels, and says “Ace Labels are hand drawn exquisite addons for cards, which enhance the overall appearance of a collectible.” Its certificate pages report population by label type.⁴⁰¹²

What a certificate record holds. ACE’s record page lists “Label,” “Name,” “Release Year,” “Set,” “Number,” “Language” and “Variant” (or “Additional Information” for a promo), the grade with its word (“MINT 9” on one, “GEM MINT 10” on the other), and four subgrades, for Surface, Centering, Edges and Corners.¹²¹³

ACE’s numbers are short. The two records read carry six and five digits, the second zero-padded: #242548 and #02289. No ACE page read here states a format.¹²¹³⁴³

Looking a number up. ACE’s site offers to “Lookup an Ace Grading graded collectible by certification number.” The record address is https://acegrading.com/cert/<number>, and both records answered normally. The research notes record that the index page, /cert, answered an automated request with HTTP 403 and a Cloudflare bot check, as did /pop, and neither was reached.⁴⁰¹²⁴⁹

Checking a scanned label. “Please check the URL in your browser,” followed by the address, “https://acegrading.com,” “When scanning our authentication labels.” No other security feature is described on the pages read.²⁸

ACE’s qualifiers are in its grading scale, which lists two groups under that heading: MC and OC, which a slabbed card can carry, and A, C and QA (Altered, Counterfeit, Questionable Authenticity), for cards it returns raw.⁴² Off-center: “The Off-Center modifier is given to a card where the grade for centering is 2 grades or more below the overall card grade. The Off-Center qualifier means that the overall grade isn’t affected as much, instead appending OC to the grade.”⁴² Miscut: “Sometimes a miscut card can not fit in the Ace slab,” and when a card “cannot be encapsulated due to a miscut,” “it will be sent back raw”; the page does not say how a miscut card that does fit is labeled.⁴² ACE’s other three qualifiers, Altered, Counterfeit and Questionable Authenticity, each end the same way: “The card will not be encapsulated and will be returned raw.”⁴² So, on my reading, ACE’s scale gives an altered card no route into a slab, where PSA’s gives five of its no-grade codes one.⁴²¹⁶ Its scale lists whole grades from 10 to 1 and no half grades.⁴²

3. The six side by side, and what changed when

Sources: the pages cited in section 2.^{222433555544726931292359253648106411416540121349}

Each grader’s certificate shape, character by character, against the 7-to-10-digit run my app’s reader looks for, and what that reader returned for each.¹⁴⁴⁴

Label changes, with the grader’s own date

The table in section 2 holds PSA’s six dated changes. With Beckett’s and CGC’s, they make the timeline below; a change with no date on a grader’s own page is left off, and nothing before February 12, 2008 has a PSA date.^{17181920212293623}

Label changes dated by the graders’ own announcements, and Beckett’s by an archive copy of its post.⁴⁴

Why a label date needs the grader’s own word. The plan for this post first called PSA’s LightHouse label a 2023 change. PSA’s own article dates it June 14, 2017, and PSA’s security page says “In 2017, PSA enhanced the security features found on the label used inside the PSA holder.”¹⁹²⁴ I found no PSA label redesign dated 2023 on psacard.com; PSA’s 2024 changes were a new holder (May 14, 2024) and a blue label for autograph-only items (announced June 5, effective June 19, 2024).²¹²² The 2023 redesign belongs to CGC, announced June 20, 2023 for July.²³ Collector guides that number PSA’s “label styles” or date them otherwise exist; I used them only as leads.⁴⁶

Ten grader pages behind the centering post have not changed

The centering post rests on grader pages saved on October 4, 2026. Ten of them I compared with copies saved on October 5, line by line: PSA’s grading standards (the plain page) and glossary, CGC’s grading scale and its “other grading topics” FAQ, TAG’s rubric, scale and DIG page, ACE’s grading scale, SGC’s rendered scale and Beckett’s status page all read “unchanged,” ten pairs of ten.⁶⁸¹⁵ One part was not re-checked: PSA’s per-grade texts live in a script bundle that was not rendered again, and the plain page shows only the PSA 10 slide.⁶⁸ Nor were the centering post’s other saved pages, among them PSA’s centering guide, CGC’s FAQs and TAG’s glossary, none of which this post cites; the Beckett FAQ and scale both posts read are archive captures, fixed by their dates.⁶⁸²⁶⁸

Two findings about the centering post

These are findings of this post; the centering post itself is unchanged.⁶⁹

Beckett’s outage began before the October 2 notice. The centering post dates Beckett’s outage from that notice (“Beckett’s site has been offline since a notice dated October 2, 2026”).⁶⁹ The Wayback Machine’s capture of Beckett’s maintenance page on September 19, 2026 already reads: “Beckett’s digital platforms, including Beckett.com and the Beckett mobile app, remain temporarily offline while we complete infrastructure enhancements.”³⁰ Its card look-up was still live in a capture of August 19, 2026.³¹ So the site went offline at some point in the 31 days between those two captures, at least 13 days before the notice, and the October 2 notice gives the reason for what it calls “The extended downtime”.²⁹¹⁵ No Beckett page dates the start; the window rests on two archive captures.³⁰³¹

TAG’s system scores on a 1,000-point scale; on my reading, every card is scored on it, and the owner sees the score in full with one report tier. The centering post says TAG “scores out of 1,000 to answer “how strong of a 10 is this”“.⁶⁹ TAG’s own pages describe the system that way: it “scores on a precise 1000 point scale & translates into an industry standard 1-10 Grade,” generating “overall scores for the card on a 1-10 and 1000-point TAG Score scale.”⁶⁴³⁷ What the owner receives is tied to the report tier (no price for it is quoted here): “Standard DIGs focus on the core defects that impacted the grade,” while “DIG Plus Reports breakdown the card into further detail with precise 3 digit scoring”; “Slabs graded with DIG Report Plus receive a precise 1000 pt TAG Score”; and the rank “is only available to cards which have been graded via the TAG S service as a 3 digit score is needed”.⁶⁴⁶⁶ So, on my reading, every TAG card is scored on the 1,000-point scale, and the score is shown in full with the Plus report; TAG does not say in so many words that a standard report leaves it out. That is a qualification of the centering post, not a contradiction: the TAG pages it cites, the rubric, scale and DIG page, are among the ten and have not changed.⁶⁸⁶⁹

4. Reading a slab in hand, and checking it

What follows puts the graders’ own statements in the order a collector meets them, holding a slab. The order is mine; each step’s content is the grader’s.

1. Find the grader and the certificate number, and look the number up at that grader. This is the step every grader offers and the one PSA’s guarantee depends on: the card must have had “an active certification number on the cert lookup feature of the PSA website at the time it was purchased” by the person making the claim.¹ Look for the number on the label: PSA’s glossary says only “It can be found on the PSA label,” Beckett’s FAQ calls it “a bar coded serial number,” CGC’s current pages name it beside a barcode without saying which side, and CGC’s 2020 label printed it on the back. TAG puts it “left of the QR code” in the case, and SGC’s look-up wants all seven digits on a black label and all eleven characters, hyphen included, on green and white.^32625361110 Where a grader shows pictures on the record, compare them with the card in your hand: PSA calls its imaged records “extremely useful for collectors looking to verify the details of an item, including its cert number, before making a purchase,” and SGC’s app offers “high-resolution images” with its check.³⁵⁶²

2. Read what the record says, not only the label. A TAG number that has been withdrawn says “This TAG Certification number is no longer active.”³⁹ CGC says its certificate look-up counts a legacy Gem Mint 9.5 as a Gem Mint 10.⁵ Beckett, whose look-up is offline, says its “Core certification, grade records, and historical population databases remain intact and uncompromised” and lists the look-up in its first phase of return.²⁹

3. Read the words beside the number. On a PSA label, OC, ST, PD, OF, MK or MC changes what the number says. AUTHENTIC means PSA is “only certifying that the item is genuine,” a card “real but nothing more” in PSA’s words, and it may stand for an altered card, because PSA “does not always print the term “Altered” on the label itself”; five of PSA’s no-grade codes for alterations can still lead to an Authentic Altered holder.¹⁶¹ On a CGC label, a 9.5 needs its words: GEM MINT (now a 10) or MINT+ (below a 10).⁴⁵ At CGC, SGC and TAG, a 10 needs its words too: Pristine or Gem Mint.⁴⁶⁷ At Beckett the words split differently: its only 10 is Pristine, Gem Mint is its 9.5, and the black label marks a Pristine 10 with four 10 subgrades.⁸⁹ At ACE, OC appended to the grade means centering graded “2 grades or more below the overall card grade.”⁴²

4. Read the label’s color where the grader gives color a meaning. PSA: red for the item, blue for the autograph only since June 19, 2024 (and blue for PSA/DNA encapsulations before January 1, 2019).²²²⁰ Beckett: black for four 10 subgrades.⁹ CGC: gold for Pristine 10, and green for a Qualified grade that CGC does not guarantee.²³⁵⁹ SGC: black labels carry seven-digit numbers, green and white labels eleven characters.¹⁰

5. Check the features the grader publishes, and only those. PSA describes, on its current label, the LightHouse logo “with on/off illumination effect,” a “Fugitive ink graphic pattern to prevent label washing,” a “PSA logo with UV logo pattern” on the back, and a QR code to its look-up; its holder is tamper-evident, which PSA defines as leaving “some evidence that the holder has been compromised.”²⁴³⁵ CGC lists “microprinting, UV ink, holographic foil and a unique certification number and barcode,” and a case that “resists impacts and tampering.”²⁵ TAG’s check is its Proof Mark, scanned with its own app: “Locate the Proof Mark on the back of the slab, directly behind the QR code.”¹¹ ACE’s is the address a scanned label opens, which should be “https://acegrading.com”.²⁸ Beckett’s archived FAQ gives one sentence and no list, and the SGC pages read here describe no feature, so a collector holding those slabs has the look-up and little else from the grader.²⁶²⁷ This post describes no more than the graders publish, and nothing about how a label or case could be faked.

6. Know what a label date tells you. A PSA label with the grade number under the grade words dates from February 12, 2008 or later; the LightHouse label with fugitive ink from June 14, 2017; a blue autograph-only label from June 19, 2024, though blue alone does not date it: “Prior to January 1, 2019, PSA/DNA used blue labels” for autograph authentication too, so a blue label may be from before 2019 or from June 19, 2024 on.^17192220 A CGC Cards label is from the 2023 change, and a CGC Trading Cards label with subgrades from before it.²³³⁶ That is my reading of the graders’ dated announcements; none of their pages read here is a guide to dating labels.

7. Read a population report as a count of slabs. PSA’s report counts “every single card we have ever graded and encapsulated,” not “ALL CARDS IN EXISTENCE,” and not the cards rejected “for evidence of alteration, restoration or questionable authenticity”; CGC calls its report “not an indicator of value or rarity”; SGC warns that “inconsistencies may be present.”⁵⁶⁶⁰⁶³ Nothing in this post is financial advice: it describes what the graders print and publish, and it makes no claim about what any slab is worth.

8. When a look-up page refuses an automated request, that is the page working. Several of these look-ups put a check in front of scripts. The research notes record that PSA’s certificate pages and population report, CGC’s look-up, and ACE’s look-up index and population report answered my requests with HTTP 403 and a Cloudflare challenge; the one file saved for PSA’s population report is PSA’s sign-in page, so that report also sits behind a sign-in; and SGC’s form carries a reCAPTCHA. My scripts stopped there, and those pages were not reached. A collector opening the same pages in a phone’s browser is the user they are built for; whether each one then shows a record was not checked for this post.^47484910

5. The craft, as rules with numbers

These are the rules the sections above support, each with where it comes from. They state what the graders publish and what was measured; they are not grading advice.

Sources for the table: PSA’s guarantee, standards, FAQ, glossary and articles;^{116353171819202122} PSA’s security page, API, CardFacts links and population article;^24555456 PSA’s set pages;⁵⁰⁵¹⁵² Beckett’s archived pages;²⁶⁹⁸ CGC;^{45233659256048} SGC;^1066327 TAG;¹¹⁷⁴¹ ACE;^12132842 and the measurement.¹⁴¹⁵

Two of those rules carry most of the weight. The key rule is why a label read by eye or by camera is only a pointer: PSA stands behind its opinions “as reflected on each PSA label,” and on my reading the look-up by the number is how a buyer checks that the opinion still stands.¹ And the letters rule is why a grade is never just a number: the same “9” on a PSA label is two different statements with and without OC, and the same “9.5” on a CGC label is two different grades depending on the words beside it.¹⁶⁴

6. The Apple way: what Kiradex’s label reader does today

Kiradex is my card-collecting app, and its scanner reads a slab’s label off the camera and stores the grader, the grade and the certificate number on the copy of the card in the collection. What follows is what the code does in the working tree as I read it on October 5, 2026, and then what it gets right and wrong against the graders’ published formats. The code was read, not run on a phone or a Simulator; the measurement below runs a Python copy of the reader over typed text, which is the honest limit of what this section can claim.³²¹⁴

Reading the text

The scanner hands each camera frame to Vision. A VNRecognizeTextRequest runs at the .accurate recognition level, in English (and in Japanese plus English for the Japanese catalog), with language correction turned off; the comment says why: “Card names are not dictionary words, and a “corrected” collector number is a wrong one.” Each line it finds comes back with its text, its height and where it sits.⁷⁰ Everything after that is string work on those lines.

Finding the grader, the number and the grade

Six graders. The app’s Grader type has six cases, psa, bgs, cgc, sgc, tag, ace, shown as “PSA,” “BGS,” “CGC,” “SGC,” “TAG” and “ACE.”³²

The grader, by name. Each grader has “marks,” looked for as whole words: the frame’s text is split at anything that is not a letter, a digit or a period, and each piece is folded, which drops case, accents and the periods. The marks are psa; beckett or bgs; cgc; sgc; taggrading or tag; acegrading or ace. Because cards themselves print “TAG TEAM” and “ACE SPEC,” TAG and ACE carry a flag, isAlsoCardText, set for the whole grader, and its comment says “Such a name only means a grader beside a certificate number.” In the code the condition is that the frame holds a certificate anywhere (certNumber != nil), and it applies to every mark of the grader, acegrading and taggrading included. The first grader in that order that passes wins.³²⁵³

The certificate, by length. “The certificate: the longest run of 7 to 10 digits,” found by the pattern (?:^|\D)(\d{7,10})(?!\d).³²

The grade, by its words. “The grade: a number from 1 to 10, on or right beside a line with a grade word (“GEM MT 10”); failing that, the tallest such number.” The grade words are gem, mint, mt, nm, ex, vg, good, fair, poor, pristine; SGC’s gm and pri are not among them. The number may not follow a letter, a digit, an underscore, a period, a slash or a #, and may not be followed by a letter, a digit, an underscore, a period or a slash, which is why “9OC” yields no grade.³²¹⁴

Several looks, merged. A label is read over more than one frame: “A label is small print, and often read a look late,” so a card read for certain gets looksForALabel = 2 more looks before rapid mode takes it for a raw card. Later readings fill in what earlier ones missed, keeping the later grade and the longer certificate, and only when the grader is the same.⁷¹⁷²

The label helps find the card. A PSA-style “#4” counts as a loose number (“Numbers given without a set size: a grading label’s “#4”“), and the latest year printed scores a set by year. A set’s name scores only when the text holds the index’s English set name (or, for the Japanese catalog, its Japanese name).⁵³

What it keeps, and what it offers

Three fields. A copy stores graderRaw (empty for a raw card), grade (“1 to 10 in halves; 0 when there is none”) and certNumber, and the CloudKit schema carries the same three: CD_graderRaw, CD_grade, CD_certNumber.³³⁷³ Nothing else from the label is kept: no qualifier, no designation, no subgrades, no label type or color, no Pristine or Gem, no date.³³

Editing. The copy editor’s grade picker offers “Grades as labels print them: 10 down to 1, in halves,” for every grader, plus “Not noted,” and the certificate field opens a number pad.³⁴

One look-up link per grader, or none. verificationURL(cert:) returns https://www.psacard.com/cert/<cert> for PSA and https://www.cgccards.com/certlookup/<cert>/ for CGC, and nothing for BGS, SGC, TAG and ACE; its comment says a grader gets a link only “if it has a public page that takes the number in its address.” The editor shows a “Look Up at” button with the grader’s name only when a link exists.³²³⁴

Duplicates. A copy whose grader and certificate already belong to a copy of the same card is refused with a toast built as "\(grader.name) \(details.certNumber) is already registered." The check looks at one card’s copies, not across the collection.³³⁷⁴

What the scan sheet shows. The grade and number, as in the UI test’s “PSA 10” and “49392218,” and no centering line for a graded copy, because “a case hides the card’s edges.”⁷⁵⁷⁶

What is proven. Unit tests on typed text cover a PSA, a Beckett and a CGC label, raw cards, and the “TAG TEAM” and “ACE SPEC” guards; a UI test scans a drawn fixture label printed with “2026 KIRA BASE,” “PSA,” “GEM MT,” “10” and “49392218”.^58777876 On a phone, the roadmap is plain: “Focus distance, zoom, speed, glare on foil, and slabs behind plastic are all unproven; the Simulator has no camera.”⁷⁹

Where it goes wrong, measured

What was run. A Python script copies SlabLabel.init?(reading:) and Grader.verificationURL(cert:) line for line. Before anything else it checks itself against the app’s own tests. Those read a label eight times across two test files, and one reading, “TAG TEAM,” is in both files, so the script runs seven distinct readings: the PSA, Beckett and CGC labels, the raw card, “TAG TEAM,” “ACE SPEC,” and an ACE label with a seven-digit number (for which the app’s test asserts only that the grader is ACE, and the script compares only that). All seven pass. Two other expectations in those files are not part of this check: the PSA look-up address the PSA test asserts, and a test that compares the whole label read through the scanner. It then builds sixteen synthetic labels from the published formats, two of them in layouts no grader page shows (PSA’s OC written apart from the number, where the glossary writes it joined, and the third ACE label below): the grader’s name, “CARD NAME,” “SET NAME,” the grade as that grader words it (PSA’s GEM MT 10 as its CardFacts page writes it, the glossary’s “Mint 9oc,” CGC’s, TAG’s and ACE’s grade names, and SGC’s 10 GM and, for its 8, which has no letters in its grade name, the quality word beside it, NM/MT 8), and a certificate number in that grader’s shape, using PSA’s API sample, the ten-digit CGC example, SGC’s two formats, two TAG shapes (one of them a made-up mix of letters and digits, since TAG publishes “a mix of numbers and letters” with no fixed order), and ACE’s two published records. The third ACE label adds the site name, ACEGRADING.COM, on a line of its own; ACE’s authentication page names that address as the one a scanned label should open and does not say the label prints it, so that layout is an assumption.^141550628 Three limits: this is a Python copy, not the Swift; the input is typed text, as if the camera had read every character perfectly, not a camera reading; and how each grader lays its label out is not published, so the lines are in a plausible order, not a measured one.¹⁴ The script also carries a separate section that runs a sketch of the brief’s proposed rules (section 7), kept apart from the measurement of today’s reader. Every run of it, all on October 5, 2026 but those of October 15, and each listed in the note, returned the same readings from today’s reader for the sixteen labels.¹⁴

Source: measure_slab_parser.out.txt, last re-run October 15, 2026.¹⁴

Sixteen synthetic labels built from the published formats, two of them in assumed layouts, through a Python copy of the app’s reader: 3 whole, 6 with a meaning-changing word lost, 7 wrong.¹⁴¹⁵⁴⁴

The count, over one denominator. Of the sixteen, 3 (18.75%) come through whole: grader, certificate, grade and every word that changes the grade’s meaning. Nine (56.25%) have the grader, the certificate and the grade (or, for the two designations, its absence) right, and 6 of those nine lose a word that changes what the number means: OC, AUTHENTIC, PRISTINE, GEM MINT on a legacy 9.5, MINT+ on a current 9.5, and AUTHENTIC ALTERED. Seven (43.75%) are wrong: 1 grade lost, 2 certificates cut short, and 4 slabs (25%) not recognized as slabs at all.¹⁵ The script’s own summary line counts the same run differently and agrees: “9 of 16 read grader, cert and grade number as the label states; 7 did not; 7 cases lose a qualifier or designation the label prints,” the seventh being the joined “9OC,” which also lost its grade.¹⁴¹⁵

By grader, as the output prints it.¹⁴¹⁵

• PSA, 4 labels: 1 whole; 2 with the grade right and a word lost (OC written apart, AUTHENTIC); 1 with its grade lost (OC written joined, the glossary’s way). Every PSA certificate was read right. Whether PSA prints OC joined to the number or apart is not published on the pages read, so both spellings were run.¹⁴
• Beckett: not run, because no Beckett page read here gives a certificate format; the app’s own Beckett test (ten digits, subgrades on one line, the 9.5 the tallest number) passes in the copy.¹⁴⁵⁸
• CGC, 5 labels: 1 whole (Gem Mint 10); 4 with the number right and the word that gives it meaning lost (Pristine, legacy Gem Mint 9.5, Mint+ 9.5, Authentic Altered). Every CGC certificate was read right.¹⁴
• SGC, 2 labels: the black label whole; the green or white label’s certificate cut to its first seven digits.¹⁴
• TAG, 2 labels: the letter-and-seven-digits code cut to its digits; the mixed code not read as a slab.¹⁴
• ACE, 3 labels: none read as a slab.¹⁴

The certificate-shape figure in section 3 draws the same failures character by character: the shaded band, a run of 7 to 10 digits, is the only shape the reader keeps.¹⁴⁴⁴

A certificate cut short is worse than a missing one. The SGC and TAG failures return a number, and it is the wrong one.¹⁴

• SGC green and white labels: 1234567-001 is read as 1234567. SGC says to “enter all 11 characters”. The app would store seven, and since its duplicate check compares the stored number, on my reading two different green-label slabs of the same card that shared a seven-digit stem would be refused as one case.¹⁰³³
• TAG: A1234567 is read as 1234567. TAG says the format is “typically 1 Letter followed by 7 Numbers,” so a look-up of the stored number would not be the card’s number.¹¹
• The copy editor shows the wrong number with no warning, above a footer telling the collector the number “is printed on the case’s label.”³⁴

Every ACE slab with a five- or six-digit number, as both of ACE’s own records are, is read as a raw card, and the cause is the number’s length. ACE’s numbers on its own pages are five and six digits; the reader keeps only a run of seven to ten. With no such run anywhere in the frame, certNumber is nil, and the guard that keeps “ACE SPEC” cards from reading as ACE slabs, which is set for the whole grader, turns ACE away by any of its marks. That is what happens to all three ACE labels in the Python copy, and it would happen with the address unfolded: the guard rejects ACE before it matters which mark matched.^12133214 The fold is a second, smaller barrier. It drops the period, so “ACEGRADING.COM” becomes acegradingcom, which is not the whole word acegrading; that would matter only on a label that printed the address and no standalone “ACE,” with a number the reader accepted, and no ACE page read here says its label prints the address at all.³²⁵³²⁸ In rapid mode, after its two further looks, such a card would be registered as raw, with whatever condition the scanner is set to note for raw cards and possibly a centering reading taken through the case.⁷¹⁷⁴⁷⁵

“1999 POKEMON GAME” names no set in the index. On my reading of its CardFacts heading, PSA’s labels call Base Set “Pokemon Game,” and the app scores a set by name only when the index’s English set name appears in the text, so a PSA label gives the matcher only its year and its loose number.⁵⁰⁵³ The app’s own test records the result: a PSA label for Base Set number 4 is not certain, and “The name, the number and the year together put Base Set first.”⁵⁸ On my reading, that works for a 1999 card whose name and number belong to one 1999 set, cannot tell apart two printings with the same name and number in one year, and has no mapping from PSA’s set names to the index’s sets to fall back on; PSA’s set list could not be read to build one, because its population report was not reached (a bot check in the research notes, a sign-in page in the saved file).⁵³⁴⁷

One number, two labels. The stored model is a grader, a grade and a certificate number, so these printed grades collide in it. The summary line is the grader’s name and the number, or the name alone where there is no number, so it reads the same for both members of each pair, for instance CGC 10, CGC 9.5 or PSA 9.³³¹⁴

• CGC Pristine 10 and CGC Gem Mint 10, though CGC gives the first a gold label of its own.²³
• CGC’s legacy Gem Mint 9.5 and its current Mint+ 9.5: one is now a 10, the other below it.⁴
• SGC 10 PRI and SGC 10 GM.⁶
• TAG Pristine 10 (990 to 1000) and TAG Gem Mint 10 (950 to 989).⁷
• Beckett Pristine 10 with four 10 subgrades, the black label, and Beckett Pristine 10 without.⁹
• PSA MINT 9 and PSA MINT 9 OC, which PSA’s rule makes two different statements.¹⁶
• PSA AUTHENTIC and a PSA copy with no grade noted; likewise CGC AUTHENTIC ALTERED and a CGC copy with no grade noted. Each pair stores its grader and a grade of 0, and its summary is the grader’s name alone.^1643314

The picker offers grades a grader does not give. Against each grader’s own scale, on my reading: PSA has no 9.5, its half grades sitting “between PSA 2 and PSA 9”; ACE lists whole grades only; CGC, SGC and TAG each have two 10s, which the picker cannot tell apart; TAG has no 9.5 (“Half points are included on every grade level except for between 9 and 10”); Beckett’s 9.5 is Gem Mint and its only 10 is Pristine, and the black label is a label, not a grade.^1642467834

The links, grader by grader.

• PSA: the app builds https://www.psacard.com/cert/<n>, and PSA’s own pages use that form: the CardFacts page saved for this post links 231 times to /cert/<n>, for 201 distinct numbers, in its table of recorded sales, and none of its links adds /psa.³²⁵⁴¹⁵ The longer form https://www.psacard.com/cert/<n>/psa was seen only in search-index results, which are not saved. The research notes record that both forms answered scripts with a Cloudflare challenge, so whether either shows a record in a phone’s browser was not checked.⁴⁷
• CGC: the app’s https://www.cgccards.com/certlookup/<n>/ matches the indexed form, which the research notes record as also behind a challenge for scripts.³²⁴⁸
• TAG: https://my.taggrading.com/card/<n> is built by TAG’s own page; the app has no TAG link.⁴¹³²
• ACE: https://acegrading.com/cert/<n> served both records read; the app has no ACE link.¹²³²
• SGC: a form with a reCAPTCHA and no address for a number; the app has no SGC link.¹⁰
• Beckett: a form with a choice of BGS, BVG or BCCG and the number, offline since before September 19, 2026; the app has no Beckett link.³¹³⁰

What it costs

Unmeasured. Nothing in this post was run on a phone, so there is no time per label, no battery figure and no camera accuracy figure. The app’s own tests were read, not run, for this post. The only things executed against the app’s logic were Python: the copy of the reader and the sketch of the brief’s rules. Other scripts ran on the saved pages and outputs, not on the app: the arithmetic, the link count, the page comparison and the figure scripts.^141554684479

7. The brief: what Kiradex builds and the checks it must pass

The tree moved after this post was written. Everything below was written against the reader at commit 5a344e3f (October 5, 2026), and every sentence that says “today” means that build; the latest commit, fc9d4876 (October 15), still carries the same SlabLabel.swift. On October 15 the Kiradex working tree held uncommitted changes to the reader that carry part of this brief: a certificate shape per grader ([A-Z]\d{7} for TAG, \d{7}(?:-\d{3})? for SGC, \d{4,7} for ACE, \d{7,9} for PSA) and a look-up link for ACE at acegrading.com/cert/; and, beyond this brief, a read(code:) that reads the label’s QR code. Its ACE shape, four to seven digits, is wider than the five or six item 1 asks for; its TAG shape takes only a letter and seven digits, so item 1’s mixed-code check (K4X93B27) would not pass against it; and its PSA shape is seven to nine digits, where item 1 keeps seven to ten. Its verificationURL also gives a link only for a number in the grader’s own shape, where item 3 shows the button for any noted number and leaves the shape to item 4’s footer. Uncommitted code can still change or never ship, so the brief stands as the record of what was asked and as the acceptance checks; a dated section with captures follows once a build carries the change.⁸⁰

The label reader’s job is to carry the grader’s own words into the collection accurately and then send the collector to the grader’s record. It cannot judge whether a slab is genuine, and it should never sound as if it had. PSA’s guarantee covers a card’s grade and authenticity provided its number was active on PSA’s look-up when the claimant bought it, and PSA stands behind its opinions “as reflected on each PSA label”; on my reading, the look-up is how a buyer checks that the opinion still stands, and the app has only read text.¹ Six items follow, each with the files it changes and a check a unit test, a UI test or a script can run. New tests use generic placeholders (CARD NAME, SET NAME) and no creature names; the existing tests’ card names are left as they are. Proposed wording is set in code type, to keep it apart from quotations.

1. Read the certificate by grader, in the grader’s published shape, and let the collector type it

Find the grader first, then the number in that grader’s shape, in Kiradex/Scanner/SlabLabel.swift:^101165121332

Match each shape against the whole token it sits in, never against part of one. For SGC, first read every dash a camera may return (U+2010 to U+2015 and the minus sign, U+2212) as a hyphen, and take seven digits, a hyphen and three digits as one code even with spaces about the hyphen, stored as 1234567-001. SGC’s black-label shape, seven digits, is the start of its green-label one, so seven digits followed, after spaces or a dash, by more digits are not a black-label code: 1234567 001 and 1234567-0012 are in neither shape, and nor is a line that ends in seven digits followed by a line that begins with a dash, or with three digits and no fourth, which is the same code returned as two lines; in each case the number is left unread and the scan sheet asks for it (item 4), rather than stored as 1234567, which is not the label’s number. The rule has two side effects: a black-label number with the grade after it on the same line (1234567 10), or with a line below it that begins with a three-digit set number (025/198), is also left unread. No label read here shows either.¹⁰¹⁴ Keep certificates as strings, leading zeros and hyphens included. Fold a camera’s O-for-0 and I-for-1 only inside a run already judged a certificate, and, on my reading of TAG’s “a mix of numbers and letters,” never inside a TAG code, where an O or an I may be the letter it looks like.⁶⁵⁵³

The guard follows the cause. Today every ACE label with a number like ACE’s own records is lost, because those five- and six-digit numbers are not a run of 7 to 10, so certNumber is nil and the isAlsoCardText guard turns ACE away by any of its marks (section 6). Keep the guard, since cards print “ACE SPEC” and “TAG TEAM,” but in each grader’s own shape: ACE counts when a standalone line holds 5 or 6 digits and the line that names it has no SPEC; TAG counts when its 8-character code is present.³²¹⁴

No folded-word change. Matching acegrading inside a folded word (acegradingcom) is not part of this item. With the guard above, every ACE label in the measurement reads without it, including the one with the address on it, because each also prints “ACE”; and no ACE page read here says its label prints the address, so the change would be built for a layout nobody has shown. It is left out. If a real ACE label turns up with the address and no standalone “ACE,” that label is the test to write the change against.²⁸¹⁴

The certificate field takes letters and a hyphen. The copy editor’s certificate field opens a number pad (the copy-certificate field in Kiradex/Views/Card/CopyEditor.swift, with .keyboardType(.numberPad)), so a collector cannot type TAG’s letter or SGC’s hyphen, while item 4 and the takeaways tell the collector to type the number. Change it to .keyboardType(.asciiCapable) with .textInputAutocapitalization(.characters) and .autocorrectionDisabled().³⁴¹¹¹⁰

Checks (new tests in KiradexTests/ScannerTests.swift unless named). Each check label below also carries a CARD NAME line, as the sketch’s do. Section 4 of the measurement output prints today’s reading beside the brief’s for each reader check below: the SGC green-label, TAG and ACE lines fail under today’s reader, and the SGC black-label and card-text lines already pass and are there to keep passing.¹⁴

• The number’s shape, SGC: SGC + 10 GM + 1234567-001 gives the certificate 1234567-001; SGC + 10 GM + 1234567 gives 1234567.
• A malformed SGC code is left unread: SGC + NM/MT 8 + 1234567-0012 gives grader SGC, grade 8 and no certificate, and so does 1234567-01. Today’s reader stores 1234567 for both.¹⁰¹⁴
• A green-label code read with another dash or with spaces is still one code: SGC + NM/MT 8 + 1234567 and 001 joined by an en dash (U+2013) gives 1234567-001, and so does 1234567 - 001; 1234567 001 gives no certificate, and so does 1234567 with -001 on the next line. Today’s reader stores 1234567 for all four.¹⁰¹⁴
• The number’s shape, TAG: TAG + GEM MINT 10 + A1234567 gives grader TAG and certificate A1234567; TAG + GEM MINT 10 + K4X93B27 gives grader TAG and certificate K4X93B27.
• The number’s shape and the guard, ACE: ACE + MINT 9 + 242548 gives grader ACE, grade 9, certificate 242548; ACE + GEM MINT 10 + 02289 gives 02289, zero kept.
• The guard still holds for card text: the existing wordsCardsPrintAreNotGraders cases still return nil, written with placeholders: CARD NAME + ACE SPEC + 153/162, and CARD NAME + TAG TEAM + 33/181.⁷⁷
• One existing expectation changes. The same test’s third expectation (wordsCardsPrintAreNotGraders in KiradexTests/ScanSessionTests.swift) expects grader ACE from ACE + 10 + GEM MINT + a card name + 1234567. Under the new ACE rule a seven-digit number is not an ACE certificate, so that reading returns nil and the line fails as written. Its number changes to 242548, ACE’s six-digit record, standing alone on its line, and it keeps its expectation of grader ACE.⁷⁷¹²
• The keyboard, in KiradexUITests/KiradexUITests.swift, in a new test method of its own, testTheCertificateFieldTakesLettersAndAHyphen, launched with the same arguments as testScanningAGradedCardKeepsItsLabel (-fixtureCatalog, -scanFixture kira1-2, -scanSlab YES): it taps Scan, waits for the find as that test does (scan-found-name, then scan-found-details), then taps scan-details, clears copy-certificate, types A1234567 and asserts the field’s value is A1234567; then clears it, types 1234567-001 and asserts that value; and it ends there, never tapping scan-have, so nothing it types is registered. It does not go into testScanningAGradedCardKeepsItsLabel: the editor the scan sheet opens is bound to the sheet’s own details (ScanResultPanel passes $details to CopyEditor), scan-have registers whatever those details hold, and that test later asserts that the registered copy’s row contains 49392218, which a number typed over the scanned one would break. No existing expectation changes for this check. This check touches only the keyboard change: the field’s value does not pass through the reader. It was not run; if it passes before the change, the run is not typing through the on-screen keyboard, and the check needs another form.^76757434
• A Python sketch of these rules and item 2’s, added to the measurement script as a section of its own (section 4 of measure_slab_parser.out.txt, kept apart from the measurement of today’s reader), reads 16 of the 16 labels with grader, certificate and grade number right (today’s reader: 9 of 16), and all 39 check labels in items 1 and 2 as this brief says, with the 15 summary strings item 2 writes out matching its summary rule, and merges all 10 of item 2’s successive looks as item 2 says. Under it, 6 of the 7 existing expectations the port check runs hold, and the seventh is the ACE expectation that changes, above; of two further existing expectations it runs, one changes, as item 2 says. The sketch is not the app: the Swift change has to pass the tests above on its own.¹⁴¹⁵

2. Keep the words beside the number

Add three fields to SlabLabel and to CopyDetails and CardCopy, each with a default, as CloudKit requires; the schema in docs/cloudkit-schema.ckdb gains them and is deployed before release:³³⁷³

• gradeWords: the grade’s words as printed, upper-cased: the grade’s line with its number and any qualifier the grader lists taken out (GEM MT, PRISTINE, MINT+, SGC’s PRI or GM), or the grade-word line beside it when the number stands alone; empty when none was read. The reader’s grade words become every word of the six graders’ grade names as their saved scale pages print them: today’s ten, plus excellent, fr, gm, near, nrmt, perfect, pr, pri and very. So CGC’s legacy PERFECT over 10 and PSA’s PR over 1 keep their words, which today’s list would lose. Four of the new words count only where the scales use them, so that a small number on a set line does not become the grade: near only before mint, very only before good, and PSA’s PR and FR only as a whole descriptor line or directly before the number PSA gives them, 1 and 1.5. A small number beside EX on a set line is read as a worded grade today, and stays so; no label read here shows it.^3216846742
• qualifier: for PSA, one of OC, ST, PD, OF, MK or MC; for ACE, OC or MC, the two of its listed qualifiers a slabbed card can carry; read when printed with the number, joined (9OC) or apart (9 OC). A joined code is read only from a token on a line that itself carries a grade word, as MINT 9OC does; elsewhere a number with letters joined to it is no grade at all, as it is for today’s reader, so the 1ST of a 1ST EDITION line, which the PSA reading in the app’s own tests carries, is neither grade 1 nor qualifier ST. And where a bare grade number is worded on the same or a neighboring line, it wins over a number with a code joined to it, so a camera line that runs 1ST EDITION into GEM MT still gives the 10; MINT 9OC alone still reads as 9 with OC. Among numbers with a code joined to them on one line, the one that directly follows a grade word wins, so MINT 9OC beats 1ST on a line that runs 1ST EDITION into MINT 9OC. ACE says it appends “OC to the grade”; how it prints MC is not stated, so MC is read the same way on an assumption. Other graders get no qualifier list, since none of their pages read here gives one. A code a grader does not list, such as OC on a CGC label, is not a qualifier for that grader and is not dropped: it stays in gradeWords, whether printed joined to the number or apart, with the number taken out, so nothing printed on the grade’s line is lost.^163425032
• designation: AUTHENTIC, ALTERED AUTHENTIC or AUTHENTIC ALTERED, AUTHENTIC ART, read where no number is printed.¹⁶⁴

CopyDetails.summary shows them as stored, in capitals as read, and never title-cased: title case would turn PSA’s GEM MT into Gem Mt and SGC’s NM/MT into Nm/Mt, spellings no saved grader page uses, and the scan sheet already sets its headline in capitals (the headline in ScanResultPanel carries .textCase(.uppercase)). The order is fixed: the grader, the grade’s words, the number, the qualifier; or the grader and the designation where no number is printed. So the summaries read PSA MINT 9 OC, CGC PRISTINE 10, CGC MINT+ 9.5 and PSA AUTHENTIC; the order is the app’s, not each label’s, so SGC’s 10 GM reads SGC GM 10. Nothing is inferred and nothing rewritten: a legacy CGC GEM MINT 9.5 reads CGC GEM MINT 9.5, with the note CGC now counts this as Gem Mint 10, which is CGC’s own legacy key, and is never changed into a 10.^4575506

The words travel with the label, through four places, and each has to carry them:^33727134

• CopyDetails.init(label:), in Kiradex/Models/CardCopy.swift, copies the three new fields from the label.
• merged(with:), in Kiradex/Scanner/Sighting.swift, rebuilds a label from its grader, grade and certificate when a later look fills in an earlier one. As written today it would drop the words a first look read as soon as a second look merged in. The new fields do not merge one by one: the grade’s statement, its number, gradeWords, qualifier and designation, moves as one. A later look that reads neither a number nor a designation has not read the statement, and leaves the earlier one whole. A later look with a different number, or with a designation where the earlier had a number, or the reverse, has read a different statement, and all four fields take its values, empty ones included, so MINT 9 OC followed by GEM MT 10 is PSA GEM MT 10, never PSA GEM MT 10 OC. A later designation that contains the earlier one, or is contained in it, keeps the longer: a look that reads only AUTHENTIC after one that read ALTERED AUTHENTIC has missed a word, not read another outcome. A designation that neither contains nor is contained in the earlier one, such as AUTHENTIC ART after AUTHENTIC ALTERED, is a different statement, and replaces it. A later look with the same number, or the same designation, keeps its own words and qualifier where it read them and the earlier look’s where it read none: the reader cannot tell a look that missed OC from a label printed without it, and a look that read the letters beside the same number is taken as the fuller reading. The certificate keeps the longer reading, as today, and setText (item 6) the first.
• CopyDetails’ memberwise initializer, in CardCopy.swift, gains the three as parameters with empty defaults.
• CardCopy.details, also in CardCopy.swift, is the computed property whose getter builds a CopyDetails from the stored fields through that initializer and whose setter writes them back. Both gain the three new stored fields. The inspector’s row for a copy shows copy.details.summary, and its identifier is copy- followed by that summary (CopiesSection, in Kiradex/Views/Card/CopyEditor.swift), so a getter left as it is would turn a saved PSA GEM MT 10 back into PSA 10.

Checks:

• PSA + MINT 9OC + 00000000 gives grade 9, qualifier OC and the summary PSA MINT 9 OC; PSA + MINT 9 OC + 00000000 gives the same.
• PSA + AUTHENTIC + 00000000 gives no grade and designation AUTHENTIC, and the summary PSA AUTHENTIC.
• CGC + PRISTINE 10 and CGC + GEM MINT 10 (each with 3732635008) give different gradeWords and different summaries, CGC PRISTINE 10 and CGC GEM MINT 10, neither with a note.
• CGC + GEM MINT 9.5 + 3732635008 gives the summary CGC GEM MINT 9.5 with the legacy note; CGC + MINT+ 9.5 + 3732635008 gives CGC MINT+ 9.5 with no note.
• SGC + 10 PRI and SGC + 10 GM (each with 1234567) give different gradeWords (PRI, GM) and the summaries SGC PRI 10 and SGC GM 10, so SGC’s two 10s stay apart.
• ACE + MINT 9 OC + 242548 gives grade 9 and qualifier OC, and ACE + MINT 9OC + 242548 the same. No ACE label with OC was among the sixteen measured, and today’s reader would miss it before the qualifier mattered, since it reads no ACE label carrying ACE’s own five- or six-digit number; the Python sketch reads both as this check says.⁴²¹⁴
• ACE + MINT 9 MC + 242548 gives qualifier MC, on the assumption above about how ACE prints it; CGC + MINT 9 OC + 3732635008 gives grade 9 and no qualifier, since CGC lists none, with gradeWords MINT OC and the summary CGC MINT OC 9; CGC + MINT 9OC + 3732635008 gives the same. The letters are not a qualifier for CGC, and they are not dropped either: they stay in the grade’s words, with the number taken out, so the summary’s fixed order puts them before the number.⁴²⁴¹⁴
• PSA + CARD NAME + 1ST EDITION + GEM MT 10 + 00000000 gives grade 10, no qualifier, gradeWords GEM MT and the summary PSA GEM MT 10; CGC + CARD NAME + 1ST EDITION + MINT 9 + 3732635008 gives grade 9, no qualifier, gradeWords MINT and the summary CGC MINT 9. PSA’s CardFacts heading for a first-edition card ends in 1ST EDITION, and the PSA reading the app’s tests type carries the same line, with #4 between it and the grade’s words, so those tests do not meet this case. A reader that takes a joined code from any number reads both labels as grade 1, the PSA one with qualifier ST; today’s reader reads both right, because its grade pattern takes no letter after the number, and the Python sketch reads both as this check says.^50583214
• If the camera runs the two columns together, the bare number still wins: PSA + CARD NAME 1ST EDITION GEM MT 10 + 00000000 gives grade 10 and no qualifier, and so does PSA + 1ST EDITION GEM MT + 10 + 00000000. With the joined-code rule alone, both lines carry a grade word, 1ST counts, and the first of two equally tall numbers is kept, so both read as grade 1 with qualifier ST; today’s reader gives 10 for both. The check asserts only the grade and the qualifier: on a run-together line, gradeWords holds the rest of that line as read, card text included. Whether the camera ever reads a PSA label’s columns as one line has not been measured.³²¹⁴
• Run together beside a qualified grade, the code after the grade word wins: PSA + CARD NAME 1ST EDITION MINT 9OC + 00000000 gives grade 9 and qualifier OC. Without that rule there is no bare number to prefer, 1ST is the first of two equally tall numbers with a code joined to them, and the label reads as grade 1 with qualifier ST; today’s reader reads no grade from it, since it takes no letter after the number.³²¹⁴
• CGC + CARD NAME + PERFECT + 10 + 3732635008 gives gradeWords PERFECT and the summary CGC PERFECT 10; PSA + CARD NAME + PR + 1 + 00000000 gives gradeWords PR and PSA PR 1. Both put the words on a line of their own above the number, the layout of the app’s own PSA test reading.^4165814
• A set line’s small number is not the grade: PSA + 2007 POKEMON POP SERIES 5 + CARD NAME VERY + #4 + NM-MT + 8 + 00000000 gives grade 8 and gradeWords NM-MT, and PSA + 2019 POKEMON PR 5 + CARD NAME + #4 + MINT + 9 + 00000000 gives grade 9 and gradeWords MINT, as today’s reader does. Counting very and pr wherever they appear would read both as grade 5.¹⁴
• Successive looks, in unit tests of merged(with:), each pair with the same certificate: PSA MINT 9 OC then PSA GEM MT 10 gives PSA GEM MT 10 with no qualifier; GEM MT 10 then MINT 9 OC gives PSA MINT 9 OC; MINT 9 OC then MINT 9 gives PSA MINT 9 OC; GEM MT 10 then a bare 10 keeps GEM MT; MINT 9 OC then a look with no grade read keeps PSA MINT 9 OC; MINT 9 then AUTHENTIC gives no grade, designation AUTHENTIC and PSA AUTHENTIC; AUTHENTIC then GEM MT 10 gives PSA GEM MT 10 with no designation; ALTERED AUTHENTIC then AUTHENTIC keeps PSA ALTERED AUTHENTIC; CGC AUTHENTIC ALTERED then CGC AUTHENTIC ART gives CGC AUTHENTIC ART; and CGC GEM MINT 10 then CGC PRISTINE 10 gives CGC PRISTINE 10. No merged label carries both a grade and a designation. The Python sketch runs all ten; under the rule this replaces, each field kept where the later look has one, MINT 9 OC then GEM MT 10 gives PSA GEM MT 10 OC, two more store a designation beside a grade, and the ALTERED AUTHENTIC pair loses ALTERED.⁷²¹⁴
• Saved and read back, in KiradexTests/CopyTests.swift: a copy added with addCopy(of:details:) from the label PSA + MINT 9OC + 00000000, then read back through a second ModelContext on the same in-memory container, gives gradeWords MINT, qualifier OC and the summary PSA MINT 9 OC; one from PSA + AUTHENTIC + 00000000 gives designation AUTHENTIC and the summary PSA AUTHENTIC. This is the check that CardCopy.details stores and returns the words.⁸¹³³
• A copy saved before the change, with the new fields empty, still reads PSA 10: the existing summary expectation in aRawCopyKeepsItsCentring, in KiradexTests/CopyTests.swift, passes unchanged.⁸¹¹⁴
• Existing expectations that change. aGradedCardCarriesItsLabel, in KiradexTests/ScanSessionTests.swift, compares the whole label with one built from a grader, a grade and a certificate; its reading prints GEM MT 10, so under this item the label also carries the gradeWords GEM MT, and the expected label gains them (the sketch runs this one and finds it changes so). In testScanningAGradedCardKeepsItsLabel, in KiradexUITests/KiradexUITests.swift, the fixture prints GEM MT beside 10. If the reader takes them as the grade’s words, as this item means it to, two of its expectations change. The scan sheet’s headline (scan-found-details), which the test expects to contain PSA 10, reads PSA GEM MT 10 · Cert 49392218, so the expected text becomes PSA GEM MT 10. The copy’s row, whose identifier is built from the summary, becomes copy-PSA GEM MT 10, so the button the test looks up becomes that. Its expectation that scan-found-readings does not exist does not change: item 4 keeps that line empty for a graded copy. The sketch does not model the drawn fixture, since its line order depends on how the camera reads the picture.^777634757814

3. Offer each grader’s look-up, as a link and only as a link

Change Grader.verificationURL(cert:) and the copy editor’s Look Up at button (in Kiradex/Views/Card/CopyEditor.swift, shown today only when a link exists):³²³⁴

Sources for the links: PSA’s own CardFacts links, CGC’s indexed form, TAG’s own cert-search script, ACE’s record pages, SGC’s look-up page and Beckett’s archived look-up.^544841121031

Keep PSA’s link unless a phone shows it failing. The app’s PSA link is https://www.psacard.com/cert/<n>, the form PSA’s own CardFacts page uses for every certificate it links (231 links, 201 numbers, none with /psa after the number).³²⁵⁴¹⁵ The form /cert/<n>/psa rests only on search-index results, which are not saved. The research notes record that both forms answered scripts with a bot check, so neither was seen to reach a record.⁴⁷ Nothing changes unless a check on a phone shows the current form failing: open https://www.psacard.com/cert/<n> in Safari on a phone with a number the collector owns; if it shows the record, the link stays as it is; only if it does not, and /cert/<n>/psa does, does the link switch. Beckett’s link redirects to its maintenance page until its look-up returns in “Phase 1”.²⁹

The app opens the grader’s page in the browser and never fetches it itself. The research notes record bot checks in front of PSA’s, CGC’s and ACE’s look-ups; the file saved for PSA’s population report is a sign-in page; SGC’s form has a reCAPTCHA; and PSA’s API needs a token made from the collector’s own PSA login.^4748491055 For the same reason the app shows no “verified” state of its own: it has looked nothing up.

Checks:

• The button’s action is one function, Grader.lookUp(cert:), which returns the page to open and the text to copy, if any; the button writes that text to the pasteboard and then opens the page. A unit test of that function asserts each grader’s page for a sample number, including 02289 (ACE, zero kept) and A1234567 (TAG); that SGC’s and BGS’s pages carry no number and their text to copy is the certificate as given (1234567-001, 0012345678); and that the other four graders copy nothing. The button shows for any noted number, whatever its shape, and the test asserts that too: a number in another grader’s shape, such as 49392218 under SGC, still gets SGC’s page and is copied as given. Item 4’s footer, not the button, is what flags a number in the wrong shape.
• A new UI test of its own, testTheGraderPickerOffersEachGradersLookUp, launched with the same arguments as testScanningAGradedCardKeepsItsLabel (-fixtureCatalog, -scanFixture kira1-2, -scanSlab YES), taps Scan, waits for the find as that test does (scan-found-name, then scan-found-details), then taps scan-details, where the fixture’s PSA label has already put 49392218 in the certificate field (the look-up button shows only when a number is noted), sets the Grader picker to SGC and asserts that a button titled Copy Number, Open SGC Look-Up exists; then sets it to BGS and asserts Copy Number, Open Beckett Look-Up. It never taps scan-have, so the copy is not registered. It does not go into testScanningAGradedCardKeepsItsLabel, for the reason given in item 1’s keyboard check: the picker writes the scan sheet’s own details, so that test would register a BGS copy, and its look-up of the row copy-PSA GEM MT 10 (item 2) would fail. No existing expectation changes for this check. It does not tap the button: the tap opens the page through openURL, which sends the app to the browser, so what is copied is asserted in the unit test above and not read back from the pasteboard in the UI test.⁷⁶⁷⁵³⁴
• A script check fails if any Swift file under Kiradex/ calls URLSession with a grader’s host (psacard.com, beckett.com, cgccards.com, gosgc.com, taggrading.com, acegrading.com).
• The PSA link stays https://www.psacard.com/cert/<n> (the existing link assertion in aPSALabelGivesGraderGradeAndCertificate, in KiradexTests/ScannerTests.swift, passes unchanged); a switch to /cert/<n>/psa ships only with a note in the change’s description naming the phone check, its date, that the current form failed and that the other showed the record.⁵⁸

4. Say what was and was not read

Each new string has one place, and none repeats what its screen already shows. The scan sheet’s reading line stays what it is today, a line for raw cards only: ScanResultPanel’s readings returns nil for any copy with a grader, so no graded-copy string goes there. Each string comes from a function the view calls, the way the editor’s centering footer comes from CenteringNote.text(for:) today, so a unit test can assert it.^75347471

Sources for the reasons: PSA’s guarantee, the measurement, TAG’s TAGD page and the app’s duplicate check.^1141133

What the existing UI tests see. On the fixture label both the grade and the number are read, so this item adds nothing to its headline. In testScanningAGradedCardKeepsItsLabel, the expectations on scan-found-details change only as item 2 says, and the expectation that scan-found-readings does not exist holds as it is. In testScanningACardRegistersIt, a raw card, the two expectations on scan-found-readings ask that it contain up to a 10 and not judged. The first is the centering brief’s to change, not this one’s: that brief drops “Allows up to a” and “ceiling” from the app’s strings, the scan sheet’s line among them, and puts the grader’s published front figure in their place, so this brief adopts that wording for the line, and the expectation becomes front figure, the phrase in that brief’s replacement for “Allows up to a 9” (“Inside PSA’s and SGC’s published front figure for a 9”) and in its wording for a 10 (“within PSA’s published 55/45 front figure for a 10”), which that brief gives in place of “PSA 10 centering”; that the 10 wording is the line a card drawn dead center would carry is my reading. The expectation of not judged stays: that brief does not drop it. This item’s sentence goes after the line whatever its wording, and adds nothing to a graded copy’s sheet.⁶⁹ The new UI checks of items 1 and 3 change none of these, since each is a test method of its own that never registers a copy; the one check this brief adds inside testScanningAGradedCardKeepsItsLabel, item 6’s, only reads a field and types nothing into it.⁷⁶⁷⁵

Keep “verified,” “authentic,” “genuine” and “certified” out of the app’s own voice, outside the designation it is quoting from the label: the app has read text, not checked a record. And keep anything about value out of it.

Checks:

• Unit tests build each situation from synthetic readings or copy details and assert the string from the function that places it.
• A script check fails on “verified” or “authentic” as whole words, in capitals or not, in any Swift string literal under Kiradex/, with one named exception: the reader’s own designation list in Kiradex/Scanner/SlabLabel.swift, where item 2 puts AUTHENTIC, ALTERED AUTHENTIC, AUTHENTIC ALTERED and AUTHENTIC ART. The check reads string literals only, not code: a plain line search would trip on StoreKit’s .verified case in Kiradex/Services/PatronStore.swift, which is code, not copy.⁸² The designation a summary shows comes from the stored field, not from a literal, and the pickers’ Authentic entries (item 5) live in bundled data, not in Swift. No Swift string literal under Kiradex/ holds either word today, by a search of the working tree on October 5, 2026, as committed at 5a344e3f. The working tree of October 15 adds the literal "Professional Sports Authenticator", PSA’s full name, which a whole-word match passes and a substring match would not; a whole-word search of that tree finds neither word.⁸⁰
• isRegistered gains a variant that searches every CardCopy for the grader and number; a test registers PSA 00000000 on one card and expects the warning when the same number is added to another.³³

5. Offer the grades each grader gives

The copy editor’s grade picker (the Grade picker in CopyEditor.swift, which today offers CopyEditor.grades, 10 down to 1 in halves, for every grader) takes its list from the grader:³⁴

• PSA: 10, 9, 8.5 down to 2, then 1.5 and 1, with no 9.5, plus Authentic and Altered Authentic, the two outcomes item 2 reads as designations.¹⁶
• BGS: halves from 1 to 10, the 10 named Pristine and the 9.5 Gem Mint, as Beckett’s scale names them; the black label is not a grade and is not in the list.⁸⁹
• CGC: its twenty standard-card grades, Pristine 10 and Gem Mint 10 apart; the designations AU, AA and ART; and the legacy key’s grades, CGC Trading Cards and CSG Gem Mint 9.5 (which CGC counts as Gem Mint 10) and Perfect 10 (a “Retired grade; retains Perfect 10 status”), each marked as legacy, so that an older label can be entered as printed and a legacy 9.5 is never forced into Mint+ 9.5 or Gem Mint 10.⁴
• SGC: its scale’s grades, 10 PRI and 10 GM apart.⁶
• TAG: halves with no 9.5, Pristine 10 and Gem Mint 10 apart.⁷
• ACE: whole grades from 1 to 10.⁴²

Keep the lists as bundled data with the source address and the date read, the way the centering brief keeps its tolerances, so a changed scale is one data edit and a test.⁶⁹

Check: a test loads the data and asserts that PSA has no 9.5 and has its two designations, ACE has no halves, CGC, SGC and TAG each have a Pristine 10 and a Gem Mint 10 as distinct entries (CGC also has its two legacy Perfect 10s, CGC Trading Cards’ and CSG’s), CGC has AU, AA and ART and its legacy entries each marked as legacy, and every list has a source and a read date.

6. Keep PSA’s set text as printed

No change to the matcher yet. Whenever a PSA label is read, record the label’s set text verbatim in the copy’s existing notes field (CopyDetails.notes and CardCopy.notes), so a map from PSA’s set names to the index’s sets can later be built from real labels. Do not build that map from secondary lists.^50533346

Which line is the set text. The first line of the reading that begins with a four-digit year, a space and a letter (^\d{4} [A-Z]). On the fixture label that is 2026 KIRA BASE, the first of the six lines it draws; the fixture’s certificate, 49392218, also begins with four digits but not with a space after them, so it does not count. On the PSA label the app’s tests type, it is 1999 POKEMON GAME. A label with no such line records nothing.⁷⁸⁵⁸⁷⁷

How it reaches the copy. SlabLabel carries the line as setText, for PSA only; CopyDetails.init(label:) writes it into notes; and merged(with:) keeps the first look’s where a later look has none, as item 2 has it do for the words. No new stored field is added. The Notes field in CopyEditor has no accessibility identifier today; the change gives it copy-notes, for the check below. Because aGradedCardCarriesItsLabel compares the whole label and its reading begins with 1999 POKEMON GAME, its expected label gains that setText as well as item 2’s words. The Python sketch does not model this item.^3372347714

The rule fires on every PSA label, not only on an uncertain match, so that the check below does not depend on how certain the fixture’s match is. On my reading of CardIndex.match(_:), where a match is certain when exactly one card read by its number also has its name read, the fixture card, whose name and full collector number are both drawn on it, matches for certain; a rule limited to uncertain matches would never fire on it. That reading was not run.⁵³⁷⁸

Check: scanning the fixture label with -scanSlab YES puts 2026 KIRA BASE in the scanned copy’s notes; the UI test testScanningAGradedCardKeepsItsLabel, at the point where it already opens the details (scan-details) and checks the certificate field, also asserts that the field copy-notes holds 2026 KIRA BASE. It only reads the field, types nothing and taps nothing else, so the copy that test goes on to register is the one the scanner read, and the summary its later row look-up depends on does not include the notes.⁷⁶⁷⁸³⁴

Not in this brief

• Fetching any grader’s record from inside the app. Bot checks, a sign-in page, a reCAPTCHA and account tokens stand in front of PSA’s, CGC’s and SGC’s look-ups, and Beckett’s is offline; ACE’s two records answered normally and no TAG record was tried, and the brief treats those two graders the same way, as links.^474810552912
• Judging whether a slab or a label is genuine. The app can say what it read and send the collector to the grader.
• Graders other than the six in Grader; no pages were read for them.
• Prices or population counts in the app. A population report counts slabs, not cards, and is “not an indicator of value or rarity,” in CGC’s words.⁶⁰
• Grader logos, label colors or slab images, in the app or in anything it shows.

Key Takeaways

If you collect

• Look every slab up by its certificate number at the grader that made it. PSA stands behind its opinions “as reflected on each PSA label”; on my reading, the look-up is how a buyer checks that the opinion still stands, and PSA’s guarantee needs the number to have been active on PSA’s look-up when the claimant bought the card.¹²
• Read the words, not only the number. PSA’s OC, ST, PD, OF, MK and MC change what a number says; AUTHENTIC may be an altered card; a CGC 9.5 is a legacy Gem Mint (now a 10) or a current Mint+ (below one); CGC, SGC and TAG grade a Pristine 10 apart from a Gem Mint 10; and at Beckett, whose only 10 is Pristine and whose Gem Mint is a 9.5, the black label marks a Pristine 10 with four 10 subgrades.^161456789
• Type the whole number. SGC’s green and white labels take all eleven characters, hyphen included, and TAG’s numbers carry a letter.¹⁰¹¹
• Check only what the grader publishes: PSA’s LightHouse logo, fugitive ink and UV pattern; CGC’s microprinting, UV ink and holographic foil; TAG’s Proof Mark with its app; ACE’s address when a scanned label opens. For Beckett and SGC the look-up is the check.^242511282627
• Read a population report as a count of slabs, not of cards and not of value.⁵⁶⁶⁰

If you build the app

• Find the grader first, then read the number in that grader’s shape, and let the certificate field take letters and a hyphen; today’s reader reads 3 of 16 synthetic labels built from the published formats whole, and its single “7 to 10 digits” rule cuts SGC’s and TAG’s numbers short and, because ACE’s own records are shorter, misses every ACE slab numbered as those records are.^14153234
• A wrong certificate is worse than a missing one: store certificates as strings, zeros and hyphens included, and flag a number whose shape the grader does not use.¹⁴¹⁰¹¹
• Store the grade’s words, the qualifier and the designation beside the number; a grader, a number and a certificate cannot tell a Pristine 10 from a Gem Mint 10, or PSA’s 9 from its 9 OC.³³¹⁴
• Link to each grader’s own look-up and never fetch it: bot checks, a sign-in page, a reCAPTCHA and account tokens stand in front of PSA’s, CGC’s and SGC’s look-ups, and Beckett’s is offline.^4748105529
• Date a label change only from the grader’s own announcement: this post’s own plan dated PSA’s LightHouse label 2023, and PSA’s article dates it June 14, 2017; the 2023 redesign was CGC’s.¹⁹²³

FAQ

How do I verify a PSA, CGC or Beckett slab?

Look the certificate number up at the grader that made the slab. PSA’s look-up is at psacard.com/cert and its app can scan the label’s barcode; CGC’s is at cgccards.com/certlookup, and its label’s QR code looks the card up on CGC’s site; Beckett’s card look-up is a form with a choice of BGS, BVG or BCCG, offline at the time of writing and due back in Beckett’s first phase of return. PSA’s guarantee depends on the number having been active on its look-up when the claimant bought the card, and excludes tampered or counterfeit holders and labels “regardless of certification status”.^38242531291

What does OC mean on a PSA label?

Off center. PSA’s standards say cards that are off center “will either by designated “OC” or will have a numerical grade that reflects the minimum centering allowed for the grade,” and its glossary’s example is a card meeting the standard for Mint 9 except for centering, which “would be designated Mint 9oc.” PSA defines five more: ST (staining), PD (print defect) and OF (out of focus) under the same either-or rule, and MK (marks) and MC (miscut), which go on “Any and all cards” with writing or an atypical cut.¹⁶³

What does “Authentic” mean on a graded card’s label?

At PSA, “AUTHENTIC” means “PSA is only certifying that the item is genuine, without a numerical grade”; in PSA’s summary, the item “is real but nothing more.” PSA names the reasons a card may get it: an alteration, “a major defect,” or a submitter’s request. Its no-grade codes for an undersized card (N6) and a factory miscut (N8) can lead to it too, and five more, for trimming, restoration, recoloration, altered stock and cleaning, can lead to “Authentic Altered”; in each case only at the grader’s discretion and if the submitter asks for it on the form. PSA’s guarantee says items labeled “Authentic” “must be viewed as potentially interchangeable with “Authentic Altered,”” because PSA “does not always print the term “Altered” on the label itself”; its standards page, for the purposes of that guarantee, calls the “Authentic” only designation “interchangeable” with Authentic Altered, without the “potentially”. At CGC, “Authentic AU” is for cards that are authentic and unaltered but cannot get a numeric grade, and Authentic Altered is printed in the grade box. At ACE, by its scale, an altered card is not encapsulated at all: it “will be returned raw.”¹⁶¹⁴⁴²

Is a CGC 9.5 the same as a CGC 10?

It depends on the words beside it. A legacy “Gem Mint 9.5” from CGC Trading Cards or CSG is “exactly equivalent to Gem Mint 10” under CGC’s updated scale, and CGC’s look-up, population report and registry count it as a 10. A current “Mint+ 9.5” is a grade below Gem Mint 10.²³⁵⁴

When did PSA change its label?

PSA’s own articles date six changes: February 12, 2008 (the grade number under the grade words), November 12, 2013 (a hologram on the back of the insert, with a new holder), June 14, 2017 (the LightHouse label, with fugitive ink, a UV logo pattern and a QR code), January 1, 2019 (red labels for PSA/DNA encapsulations too), May 14, 2024 (a new holder, starting with sports cards) and June 19, 2024 (a blue label for autograph-only items). I found no PSA label redesign dated 2023.^171819202122

How many digits is a TAG, SGC or ACE certificate number?

SGC: “For black labels, enter all 7 digits. For green and white labels, enter all 11 characters (XXXXXXX-XXX).” TAG: “typically 1 Letter followed by 7 Numbers,” and its help center says its numbers “are a mix of numbers and letters which are generated randomly.” No ACE page read here gives a format; its own records carry six and five digits, the second zero-padded.^1011651213

Why is Beckett’s certificate look-up down?

Beckett’s status page, dated October 2, 2026, says it “detected suspicious technical activity and, out of caution, took our platforms offline,” and that “Core certification, grade records, and historical population databases remain intact and uncompromised”; the look-up is in its first phase of return. Archive captures show the site already offline on September 19, 2026, and its look-up live on August 19.²⁹³⁰³¹

Related on this site: How Card Centering Is Judged, and How to Measure It is the companion post on the same six graders: their published centering tolerances and the gauge in Kiradex that measures them; Pokémon Card Rarity and Set Symbols, English and Japanese reads the card’s own bottom line, the part a label’s set and number summarize; Prepare Your App for iPhone Duo is the walk-through that introduced Kiradex; and Pixel-Art Worlds on iPhone, Pixel-Art People: Characters and a Creator on iPhone and Pixel-Art Structures: Houses, Halls and Interiors on iPhone cover Kiradex World, the pixel town where the collection lives.

Sources