Pregrading by Sideboard uses advanced computer vision trained on 5,000+ real-world graded slabs to give you exact border centering, magnified corner wear checks, and surface scratch detection—before you pay expensive grading fees.
Front Left-to-Right border ratio
Magnified whitening & fray check
Filters glare to reveal true defects
Estimated return probability
At Sideboard in Fairport, NY, our showcases are filled with high-end vintage and modern cards, sealed booster cases, and hand-crafted specialty coffee. But we noticed a universal problem for our regulars and the whole TCG community: submitting cards blind.
Sending raw cards off to PSA, BGS, or TAG costs $25 to $100+ per card, plus weeks of waiting. All too often, a card comes back as an 8 or 9 due to invisible edge wear, microscopic foil dimples, or a 57/43 centering tilt that your naked eyes missed under room lighting.
Rather than guessing with basic rules of thumb, we trained our custom image-processing algorithm against a dataset of over 5,000+ real-world graded card inspection reports. By linking high-resolution scans directly to verified final slab grades from major grading companies, our system predicts real-world outcomes with remarkable accuracy.
Every card scanned through Pregrading by Sideboard passes through four specialized optical checks to reveal every flaw before submission.
Human eyes struggle to tell a 55/45 ratio from a 60/40 ratio. Our system automatically detects the exact outer card edges and interior artwork borders down to a fraction of a millimeter. It computes precise Left/Right and Top/Bottom percentages and compares them against official PSA 10 (55/45 front) and BGS Gem Mint guidelines.
Tiny corner dings and edge chipping are the #1 reason cards miss a PSA 10. We crop high-magnification views of all four corners and card perimeters, separating harmless dust particles from real fiber wear, whitening, and layer separation.
Holographic foil reflection and room lighting often hide real scratches or create fake glare. Our system filters out reflections to expose real surface defects: print lines, roller marks, fingernail dents, and binder indentations.
Our algorithm gets smarter with every submission. When you or our Sideboard team enter the actual grade returned by PSA, TAG, or BGS, the algorithm checks its prediction against the real slab and updates its accuracy for similar card styles and foil types.
Card manufacturing changes constantly. From the yellow borders and waxy paper of 1999 Base Set to the textured silver borders and etched holographic foils of modern Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering sets, static rules fail.
We pair pre-graded scans with verified return certificates and public reports from PSA, TAG, and BGS, validating our forecasts against real company certifications.
Automatically recognizes whether a card is vintage English, Japanese dark-back, modern full-art, or borderless, calibrating the edge contrast measurements accordingly.
Sideboard grading specialists can add notes to explain tricky centering calls, giving customers clear, human explanations alongside the computer analysis.
Compare traditional blind submissions against the Pregrading by Sideboard advantage.
Visit Sideboard in Fairport, NY. Grab a single-origin pour-over or ceremonial matcha, sit down at our play tables, and drop your raw hits into our in-shop optical scanner for instant high-resolution pre-grading.
One login for cards, drinks, and scans
Your pre-grading scans automatically sync with your Shop account at Sideboard. Place an order on sideboardny.com, buy tournament tickets, or pre-grade raw cards—all under one seamless profile.
Upload a high-resolution scan or photo now to get exact border centering ratios, corner wear analysis, and defect detection in seconds.