Welcome to Check This: Community-Powered TCG Card Authentication

The Problem with Card Conditions

It started with an argument on eBay. Actually, several arguments. As a card seller, I kept running into the same frustrating situation: a buyer would receive a Pokémon card and immediately message me about its condition. "This Charizard isn't Near Mint - look at this tiny white spot on the edge!", they'd say. I'd point out that minimal whitening still falls within Near Mint condition according to most standards, but they'd insist otherwise. Another buyer would receive a similar card with the same amount of whitening and be perfectly happy with its Near Mint description.

These weren't isolated incidents. The same pattern kept repeating with different cards and different buyers. One person's Near Mint was another's Lightly Played. What some saw as acceptable centering, others considered off-center. Even edge wear became a point of heated debate - how much is "minimal" wear anyway?

There are crazier stories too. We'd sell a card as Lightly Played only to have the buyer try to return it as Damaged, claiming to have taken it to three different mystery stores to confirm their analysis. Now, it might be easy to say "Clearly you're selling Damaged cards as Lightly Played", which we'd obviously disagree with. That's not the point.

The real problem wasn't just disagreement over specific cards. It was the complete lack of consistency in how people interpreted card conditions. Every dispute drove home the same point: the trading card community needed a better way to evaluate and discuss card conditions.

The Grading Mystery

But the problem goes deeper than just condition disputes. Professional grading, while valuable, remains a mystery to many collectors. People spend significant money sending cards for grading without really understanding what grade they might receive or why. It's like a black box - cards go in, grades come out, and many collectors are left wondering about the process in between.

This lack of transparency creates several challenges:

Collectors waste money grading cards that won't achieve their desired grade
Sellers struggle to accurately describe their cards' conditions
Buyers can't be confident in condition descriptions
The community gets very little insight into why a card got a specific grade
Every grader (PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC, TAG, MNT - and a myriad of others) have different standards

The Birth of Check This

These challenges - the eBay disputes, the grading uncertainty, the general confusion around card conditions - led to an idea: what if we could harness the collective knowledge of the entire trading card community to help solve these problems?

That's how Check This was born. We created a platform where:

Community Ratings Matter The community works together to evaluate cards, providing both condition assessments and grade predictions. No single opinion determines a card's rating - instead, multiple perspectives combine to create a more reliable consensus.
Learning Through Participation Every time you participate in rating cards, you're not just helping others - you're developing your own understanding of card conditions and grading standards. It's like having a training ground for card evaluation.
Transparent Results We're trying to create the largest database of card images sortable by condition and potential grade. Every card is saved and available for anyone to browse. Do you want to know what a Lightly Played card actually looks like? Hop over to Browse and you can filter images to see a long list of examples.

How Check This Works

When you submit a card to Check This, you're getting something unique - raw, honest opinions from the community about your card's quality. Not predictions about professional grading services, not adherence to someone else's standards, but real perspectives from real people about what different conditions and grades mean to them.

Each community member provides two key insights when they look at your card:

What condition they personally believe the card to be in, based on their own understanding and experience
What grade they would give it, according to their own interpretation of what different grades mean

This is fundamentally different from traditional grading approaches. We're not trying to guess what PSA, BGS, or any other service would say. Instead, we're capturing how individual collectors actually interpret and think about card quality. Someone might see a card as Near Mint because to them, that's what Near Mint means. Another might rate it differently based on their own interpretation of conditions.

These individual interpretations come together to give you something valuable: a true community consensus that isn't bound by any company's rules or standards. It shows you how your fellow collectors - the people you'll actually be trading and dealing with - view and value card quality.

This helps you:

Understand how the community genuinely perceives your card
See the range of interpretations about what different conditions and grades mean
Make decisions based on real-world perspectives, not corporate standards
Trade with better understanding of how others view card quality

Beyond Just Ratings

Check This isn't just about getting ratings for your cards - it's about building a more knowledgeable and confident community. When you participate, you're:

Learning what factors matter when evaluating cards
Developing your own skills
Helping others make informed decisions
Contributing to a more transparent market

Join the Community

Whether you're trying to:

Decide if a card is worth grading
Understand what condition to list your card in
Learn more about card grading
Help others make better decisions
Settle a dispute about a card's condition

Check This provides the platform and community to help you achieve these goals. Together, we're making card evaluation more transparent, reliable, and accessible for everyone.

Welcome to Check This - where the community comes together to solve the mysteries of card grading, one rating at a time.

Ready to get started? Create your account today and join a community that's revolutionizing how we evaluate cards.