How we grade.

The cardboard. We score every corner, every edge, and every face for crushing, dings, edge wear, color fade, dust shadows, and factory plastic damage.

The single biggest grade driver for Pops. A perfect figure in a 7 box still grades 7. PSA, CGC, and Beckett all weight corners + edges heavily — between them, ~50% of a final grade lives here.

The clear plastic display window. Scratches, scuffs, clouding, cracks, and how flush the plastic sits against the cardboard.

A dinged window looks worse than the box wear behind it. Graders score this as part of Surface; collectors notice it instantly on the shelf.

Convention exclusives, vaulted markers, retailer stickers, chase indicators. Integrity, flatness, alignment, color, and authenticity vs. known variants.

A bent or peeling con sticker can drop a grade an entire point. A fake sticker can fail authentication entirely.

Everything painted on the figure: face, eyes, hair edges, body, accessories. Looking for slop, smudges, asymmetric features, gloss inconsistency, and chips.

Visible through the window — the first thing a grader and a collector both see. Paint slop on the face is the most common reason for a 9 to drop to 8.

The molded plastic itself. Mold seam visibility, head-to-neck fit, base stability, surface scratches, and glue marks.

Often where 'factory defects' hide. A bobble-head sitting crooked or a visible seam line will drop a grade even when the box is perfect.

How well the figure sits inside its window — top/bottom, left/right, and box-to-figure alignment.

This is the ONE category every official grader publishes as its own subgrade. Beckett is famously the strictest on centering — a Pop that'd grade 9.5 at PSA can come back 9 from Beckett purely on centering.

Whether the factory plastic shrink-wrap is intact, whether anything's been opened/re-sealed, and whether the variant is what you say it is.

Doesn't move the grade itself, but CGC flags Authenticity separately and a fake 'vaulted' claim can fail the entire submission. This is a yes/no risk check.

The 'vibes' check. How the Pop reads at arm's length under display lighting. Color saturation, freshness, composition.

Smallest category — usually mirrors the rest. We keep it separate because borderline submissions (9 vs 9.5) often come down to 'does this feel like a 10 across the table from the grader.'