Should I use marketplace terms like NM and LP, or PSA-style numbers?

Use the marketplace terms for raw cards. NM, LP, MP, HP and DMG are what buyers already know, and they map to the comps you price against. Save numeric grades for cards in a slab, where the number is on the label and is not your opinion. Calling a raw card "about a 9" implies a precision nobody delivers by eye.

What do I do with a card sitting between two grades?

Take the lower grade. You give up a small amount per card and you eliminate the entire category of dispute where a buyer thinks you graded generously. If the card is genuinely on a line and the value is high enough to matter, say so out loud and price it at the lower grade. Naming the ambiguity yourself is what makes it a non-issue.

Should condition go on the tag, or should I wait until someone asks?

Put it on the tag. A buyer scanning a case is deciding what to pick up, and an untagged card makes them ask or skip it. Tag the grade, then name the specific flaw when they pick it up. The tag moves them through the case, the description closes the sale.

Does the same condition term mean the same thing on every card?

Not in practice. Dark-bordered cards show edge whitening far more readily than light-bordered ones, and older cards were cut less consistently at the factory, so the same wear reads differently. That is not a reason to keep two scales. It is a reason to describe the flaw instead of leaning on the letters to carry the message.

Condition Language Buyers Actually Trust

Condition talk is where a clean sale turns into an argument. Getting the words right costs nothing and saves the transaction.

A buyer picks up a card off your table, checks the tag, and reads NM. Ten seconds later they have it out of the sleeve, tilted toward the hall lights, and they are looking at a corner you have not looked at since you bought the card. Whatever happens next comes down to whether your word matched what they found.

Most dealers already know the condition ladder. Fewer have a habit for describing condition out loud, in the same words, every time. That habit is the difference between a buyer who trusts your case and one who quietly discounts everything on it. Here is how to build it.

Condition words are a promise, not a label

When you write NM on a tag you are not describing the card. You are making a commitment about what a buyer will find when they pull it out of the sleeve. The gap between those two is where disputes live.

A condition grade is your read, but the buyer holds you to the promise. Most arguments at a table are not about honesty. They are about two people using the same three letters to mean different amounts of wear. You graded from the front, in a sleeve, on a table you set up in a hurry. They graded from the back, under a light, with a thumbnail on the corner. Nobody lied. The words just did not carry enough information.

Takeaway: treat every condition term as a claim you will have to defend at arm's length, in better light than you graded in.

The ladder everyone is actually using

Raw singles trade on the marketplace scale, not the grading company scale. Whatever your personal standards are, buyers arrive with these five terms already in their head, so describe your stock in them.

Term	What it commits you to	What a buyer checks first
Near Mint (NM)	Looks pack fresh. Sharp corners, clean edges, no visible surface wear at normal viewing distance.	Back border whitening and the four corners.
Lightly Played (LP)	Minor wear that is visible but not distracting. Slight edge wear, a soft corner, or very light surface marks.	Edges under an angled light.
Moderately Played (MP)	Obvious wear. Border whitening around the card, scuffing, minor creasing that does not break the surface.	Whether a crease breaks color.
Heavily Played (HP)	Major wear. Heavy whitening, real creases, scratches, but the card is intact and playable in a sleeve.	Structural damage versus cosmetic.
Damaged (DMG)	Tears, water damage, ink, bends that break the card, anything that would not pass in a sleeve.	Whether you disclosed it before they asked.

Two rules keep this scale honest. The worst flaw sets the grade, not the average of the card: one creased corner on an otherwise clean card is not NM with a note. And when a card sits between two grades, take the lower one. You lose a few dollars a card and gain a reputation worth more than that over a season.

Takeaway: grade to the worst flaw, and round down.

Your table lighting is not the buyer's lighting

Convention halls are lit from above with flat, diffuse light, close to the worst possible setup for spotting surface wear, which only shows when light hits a card at an angle. Grade in that light and you find flaws for the first time at the same moment your buyer does.

Fix it by grading at intake instead of at the table. Run the same short check on every card that comes in:

Sleeve off. You cannot see edge wear through plastic.
Tilt the card toward a light source at a shallow angle and sweep it. Print lines and scratches only appear this way.
Back first. Whitening on a dark border is the most common reason a buyer calls your NM an LP.
Corners with your eyes, not your thumbnail. Running a nail over a corner softens it.
Check the edges end on for nicks and for a factory cut that is off center.

Thirty seconds a card at intake is cheap. The same thirty seconds with a line waiting is not, and you will rush it.

Takeaway: grade once, in good light, before the card ever reaches the case.

Name the flaw before the buyer finds it

The highest-return habit in condition talk is saying the flaw out loud first. A buyer who hears it from you sees a card with one known issue. A buyer who finds it themselves sees a card you hoped they would miss, and now the rest of your case is suspect too.

Two ways to sell the same card:

"That one's LP."

"Light whitening along the bottom back edge, corners are sharp, surface is clean. I've got it at LP because of that edge."

The second takes four extra seconds and does three things at once. It tells the buyer where to look, it shows you already inspected the card, and it justifies the price before they ask you to come down. Describing flaws specifically gets you haggled less, not more, because there is nothing left to discover.

A few phrases worth keeping in rotation:

"Clean front, the wear is all on the back."
"Soft top-left corner, otherwise it'd be NM."
"There's a print line through the art. It's factory, not handling."
"I'd call this a hard LP, some people would say MP. Priced it as MP."

That last one is the strongest move in the set. Admitting a card sits on a boundary and pricing it on the safe side ends the conversation in your favor.

Takeaway: describe the specific flaw, then name the grade. Never the other way around.

Grade the same way every time

Consistency beats accuracy here. A dealer whose LP is always a slightly conservative LP builds a case buyers can shop fast. A dealer whose LP shifts with their mood makes every buyer inspect every card, which slows a table down more than any pricing decision will.

Getting consistent is mostly a records problem. Write your standards down once, a sentence or two per grade, and keep the condition on the card record rather than in your head. A note like "back edge whitening, bottom" is enough to re-price the card months later without re-inspecting it, and it lets someone else work your table without inventing their own scale.

This is also where condition stops being a description and starts being a number. Market values move by condition, so the grade you assign at intake is the row you price against later. CardOps stores live market value and trend history by set and condition, so a card logged as LP prices against LP comps instead of the NM number you half remember. On borderline raw cards, the Grade Estimator in Pro reads condition and likely grade from the camera, including PSA 10 likelihood, before you spend anything on grading fees. It is an estimate rather than an appraisal, which is the right weight to give it: a second opinion, not a verdict.

Takeaway: write your scale down, record the grade and the reason at intake, and price off the grade you recorded.

When a buyer disagrees with your grade

It will happen, and usually the buyer is neither wrong nor working you. They found something you missed. Have a standing response so you are not improvising with a line waiting.

Ask them to show you. "Where are you seeing it?" is not a challenge. It is the fastest way to tell a real flaw from a difference in standards.
Decide on the card, not the principle. If they are right, regrade it on the spot and say so plainly. A dealer who corrects a grade in front of a buyer has just proven every other tag in the case.
If you disagree, say why and hold. "That's factory print, not handling wear, so I'm keeping it at NM" is a real answer. Discounting a card you believe is graded correctly teaches buyers to argue.
Never argue about vocabulary. Whether the hobby calls it LP or MP is not worth debating in front of a line. Talk about the flaw and let the price follow.

Then close the loop. Fix the grade on the record, not just on the tag, or the card comes back out at the same wrong price next show.

Takeaway: a regrade in front of a buyer costs you a few dollars and buys credibility across your whole case.