Is it worth grading your Pokémon cards? What a PSA 10 really adds in the UK
A PSA 10 Moonbreon sells for about £3,300 in the UK against £1,271 raw. But most cards don't jump like that. Here's what a PSA 10 adds to the cards people grade most, from real UK sales.
Short answer: sometimes. A PSA 10 can turn a £40 card into a £450 one, but only if your copy actually comes back a 10, and only once you've paid the grading fee, the postage both ways and waited.
Here's what our UK sales say about the gap between raw and PSA 10 on cards people grade a lot.
The biggest gaps in pounds
| Card | Raw (UK) | PSA 10 (UK) | PSA 10 is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Umbreon VMAX 215/203 | £1,271 | £3,300 | 2.6× raw |
| Gengar VMAX 271 | £630 | £1,687 | 2.7× raw |
| Rayquaza VMAX 218/203 | £752 | £1,796 | 2.4× raw |
| Charizard ex 199/165 | £248 | £957 | 3.9× raw |
| Lugia V 186 | £317 | £975 | 3.1× raw |
| Sylveon ex 156/131 | £285 | £920 | 3.2× raw |
| Pikachu ex 238/191 | £216 | £546 | 2.5× raw |
Some of those PSA 10 prices rest on only 3 or 4 sales, so treat them as a guide. Each card page shows how many sales are behind every grade.
Where the multiple gets silly
Two cards in our data stand out:
- The Black Bolt Seismitoad 105 sells for about £153 raw and about £1,231 in a PSA 10. That's 8 times raw.
- The Lost Origin Trainer Gallery Gengar TG06 is about £40 raw and about £458 graded 10. That's over 11 times.
Big multiples like these usually mean 10s are hard to get on that card. It's tempting, but it also means your copy is less likely to be the one that comes back a 10.
A simple way to think about it
Before you send a card off, work out three numbers:
- What it sells for raw today.
- What it sells for in the grade you honestly expect, not the grade you hope for. A 9 is often worth far less than a 10.
- What grading costs you all in: the fee, postage both ways, and insurance.
If 2 minus 3 isn't comfortably more than 1, keep it raw. Our Worth grading? page shows the raw and PSA 10 price side by side for every card where we have enough UK sales of both.
How we price these
All prices here are the middle of real eBay UK sold listings in the last 90 days. Raw means ungraded and near mint. Graded prices only count sales of that exact grader and grade. Data, not financial advice.
