Card Conditions Explained: NM, LP, MP, HP and DMG

Near Mint means the card looks essentially fresh, with at most one or two flaws you need good light and close inspection to find. Think of a card pulled from a pack and sleeved immediately. NM is the default grade most collectors want and the one most listings claim, so it is also the grade you should be strictest about.

What to check: edges should be clean, with no more than a tiny speck of whitening on the back border. Corners should be sharp; a single corner with a barely visible touch of wear is usually still tolerated within NM, two or three soft corners are not. Surface should be free of scratches visible under direct light, with full gloss intact. There must be no creases, no bends, no water damage and no dirt of any kind.

A useful mental test: if you have to tilt the card under a lamp and hunt for ten seconds to find the flaw, it can still be NM. If you notice the flaw the moment you pick the card up, it is not NM anymore. Also note that NM is not the same as Mint — see the FAQ at the end for that distinction.

Lightly Played is the grade for cards with minor but clearly identifiable wear. The card still looks good in a binder or sleeve and is perfectly presentable, but a careful inspection finds flaws without effort. Most cards that were shuffled a few times in sleeves, or stored loose in a box for a while, land here.

What to check: edges may show light whitening along part of the border, especially on the back. Corners can have small visible dings or minor fraying on one or more corners. The surface can have a few light scratches that appear when the card is tilted against light, and the gloss may be slightly reduced in spots. What LP does not allow: creases of any size, bends that remain when the card lies flat, water marks, or writing.

The line between NM and LP is where most honest disagreements happen. A fair rule: if you found more than one or two tiny flaws, or any single flaw is visible at arm's length, describe the card as LP. Nobody has ever been upset by receiving a card better than described.

Moderately Played cards show wear you notice immediately, without hunting for it. The card has clearly been used or stored carelessly, but it is still structurally sound and completely legible. MP is often where unsleeved play starts to show: shuffle wear on the borders, scuffing across the surface, corners that are visibly rounded.

What to check: edges show moderate whitening along significant portions of the border, front or back. Corners are noticeably worn or lightly rounded on several points. The surface may have scratches visible without tilting the card, scuffed areas, or a clear loss of gloss. MP can also include a minor crease — small, shallow, and not breaking the ink — which is the biggest single difference from LP.

When you photograph an MP card for a trade, shoot the worst flaw directly. An MP card described and pictured honestly trades without problems; an MP card sold as LP is the classic recipe for a dispute.

Heavily Played is the grade for cards with major, unmistakable wear. These are cards that were played unsleeved for a long time, survived a backpack, or spent years loose in a drawer. The card is still whole and fully identifiable, but nobody would mistake it for a well-kept copy.

What to check: edges show heavy whitening, often continuous along whole sides. Corners are clearly rounded or frayed. The surface can have significant scratching, scuffing, dirt buildup or ink wear. HP allows creases that are plainly visible, including ones that cross part of the card, as well as moderate border damage. Light water damage that warped the card slightly, or minor fading, also lands here.

HP cards have a real market: players who just need a playable copy in a sleeve, and collectors filling a gap until a better copy appears, both look for them precisely because of the discount. The key is that the description leaves no room for surprise.

Damaged is the floor of the scale, for cards whose problems go beyond wear into actual damage. The defining idea: the card's structural integrity or legibility is compromised, or it has alterations that most traders would consider disqualifying.

What puts a card in DMG: major creases that break the ink or fold the card, tears or rips of any size, holes, water damage with visible warping or staining, writing or ink on the card, significant fading from sun exposure, or pieces missing from the corners or edges. If a card fails any single one of these, it is DMG regardless of how good the rest of the card looks.

DMG copies of expensive cards still trade — a damaged copy of a chase card can be the only affordable entry point — but always with explicit photos of the damage. For bulk cards, DMG usually means the copy has essentially no trade value.

Grading a raw card takes about a minute once you have a routine. Step 1: clean, bright, direct light. Daylight near a window or a desk lamp works; dim ambient light hides scratches and whitening. Step 2: check both sides flat. Look at the front and back straight on. Whitening on the back border is often the first thing wear shows, especially on cards with dark backs.

Step 3: tilt against the light. Hold the card at a low angle to the light source and rotate it slowly. Surface scratches, print lines, clouding on foils and gloss loss only appear at an angle — this single step catches most of the flaws people miss. Step 4: run the corners. Look at all four corners individually; softness, dings and fraying concentrate there. Step 5: check for bends. Lay the card on a flat surface and look across it at eye level. A card that does not sit flat has a bend or crease even if you cannot see a line.

Step 6 (optional): loupe or phone macro. A cheap 10x loupe, or simply your phone camera zoomed in, settles borderline calls on edges and corners. Photograph what you see: those same photos are what you will share when you trade the card, so evaluating and documenting are really one step. If you are new to collecting, this routine is worth learning early — our guide on how to start collecting Pokémon cards covers storage habits that keep cards from slipping down this scale in the first place.

There is no universal formula, but the market behaves consistently enough to give rough ranges. Taking an NM copy as the reference price: an LP copy typically trades around 10–20% below NM. An MP copy usually sits around 30–50% below. An HP copy commonly goes 50–70% below NM, and a DMG copy trades at whatever someone is willing to pay — often 70–90% below, and effectively near zero for common cards.

Two forces bend those ranges. First, the more expensive and collectible the card, the steeper the curve: buyers of high-end cards are buying condition as much as the card, so the discount for wear grows. A played copy of a cheap playable rare barely loses value, because its buyers only care that it works in a deck. Second, scarcity flattens the curve: for genuinely hard-to-find cards, even HP copies hold a meaningful fraction of the price because any copy is better than none.

For trading, the practical takeaway is symmetry: apply the same discount logic to both sides of a swap. An NM-for-MP trade of two copies of similar NM value is not an even trade, and both parties should price that in openly.

Everything above describes raw cards — cards graded by eye, by the people trading them. Professional grading services (PSA, BGS, CGC and others) do something different: they inspect the card, assign a numeric grade, usually from 1 to 10, and seal it in a tamper-evident case. The number on the label replaces the NM/LP/MP/HP/DMG vocabulary entirely.

The two scales correlate only loosely. A raw card an honest trader calls NM might come back as anything from a 7 to a 9.5, because grading companies weigh centering, print quality and factory flaws that the NM/LP scale mostly ignores. That is why the golden rule is: never describe a raw card with a number. "This is basically a PSA 9" is a prediction, not a condition, and it is the source of endless bad feelings. Describe raw cards with the letter scale and photos; let numbers belong to cards in cases.

When a graded card is traded, condition discussion shifts to the case itself (cracked or scratched cases matter to buyers) and to whether the grade on the label is consistent with current standards. The card inside is no longer re-inspected — that is precisely the service grading provides.

Almost every condition dispute falls into one of four patterns. Grade inflation: an LP card described as NM, usually from optimism rather than malice. The invisible flaw: a crease or bend that the photos' lighting hid. Scale confusion: traders from different communities using different vocabularies, for example the European EX/GD scale versus the American LP/MP scale. Transit damage: the card left in one condition and arrived in another because it was shipped loose or poorly protected.

The prevention kit is the same for all four. Describe conservatively — when torn between two grades, state the lower one. Photograph front and back in good light, plus a close-up of the worst flaw, before the trade is agreed. Ask the other side for the same, and ask specific questions: "any creases or bends?", "how do the back edges look tilted against light?". Agree on condition explicitly in the chat before anyone ships anything, so there is a written record of what was promised.

Ship like the card matters: sleeve, top loader or semi-rigid holder, and rigid packaging. Most "the card arrived MP" disputes are really packaging failures. For the full playbook on protecting both sides of a swap, see our guide on how to trade cards safely online.

Swaptio uses exactly this scale. When you list a card you are offering, you pick its condition from NM, LP, MP, HP or DMG, and that grade is visible to everyone browsing your listing. When you post a card you are looking for, you can factor expected condition into what you are willing to give for it.

Before any deal closes, verify condition the way this guide describes: exchange clear photos in the chat — front, back, and the worst flaw — and confirm the grade in writing. If anything about the process is unclear, the frequently asked questions cover how listings, offers and the exchange flow work. An honest grade and two minutes of photos are what separate a smooth trade from a dispute.