Pokémon card condition guide: Near Mint, LP, MP and HP explained

Near Mint, Lightly Played, Moderately Played and Heavily Played are the hobby's shorthand for how much wear a raw card carries. Near Mint looks unplayed. Lightly Played has minor wear you can find on inspection. Moderately Played shows its wear at a glance. Heavily Played is rough but whole. Every card price on Pullnomics is TCGplayer's market price for a Near Mint copy, and the site has no sourced price for any other condition, so since October 8, 2026, its Deal Score method scores only a card listing whose condition is stated as Near Mint.

Two things follow. First, a condition word in a listing title is a claim and the photos are the evidence. Second, the price shown on a card page is a Near Mint price, not a price for a played copy, so a played card listed under it has not been shown to be below market.

What each condition means in practice

There is no single official rulebook for raw card condition. Marketplaces and sellers use the same labels with broadly similar meanings, and the descriptions below are that common hobby usage, not any grading company's standard. The boundaries are judgment calls, and a careful seller rounds down.

Near Mint. The card looks like it went from pack to sleeve. Corners are sharp, the surface is clean, and the most you find up close is a speck of whitening on a back edge or a faint factory print line. No scratches you can see without hunting, and no dents, bends or creases of any kind.

Lightly Played. Minor wear you can find without hunting: light whitening along some back edges or corners, a slightly soft corner, a few fine scratches or light scuffing that show when the card is tilted. Still no creases, bends or dents.

Moderately Played. Wear that is obvious at a glance: whitening around much of the back border, rounded corners, scratches or scuffs visible head-on, sometimes grime or a small indentation. Sellers differ on whether a short, shallow crease belongs here or a step lower, so ask when the photos leave any doubt.

Heavily Played. Heavy whitening, frayed edges, major scratching and one or more clear creases. The card is intact and can still be sleeved and played.

Damaged. Structural problems: tears, deep creases across the card, water damage or warping, writing, peeling layers, missing pieces.

What to check in the listing photos

• Start with the back. Whitening is pale card stock showing through at the edges, and it stands out against the dark blue border of the card back. A listing with no photo of the back has not shown you the most informative side.
• Corners. Soft, rounded or peeling corners move a card down a step on their own.
• Surface. Holo scratches and scuffs mostly appear only when the card is tilted under a light, and textured full-art surfaces hide them well in flat photos. For an expensive card, ask for an angled shot.
• Creases and dents. A crease shows as a line where the surface breaks, often visible on both sides. A dent may only show as a warped reflection under angled light.
• Sleeves and toploaders. Glare and plastic hide wear. Ask for photos of the card out of its holder, and if the seller declines, price in the uncertainty.
• Stock images. Acceptable on a card worth a few dollars. On anything expensive, a stock image is no evidence at all.

Centering is mostly a grading question: in common usage an off-center card with clean edges and a clean surface is still sold as Near Mint.

eBay's condition descriptors

On eBay, the condition of a trading card is recorded in fixed fields, not free text. The seller marks a single either as Graded, adding the grader and the grade, or as Ungraded with one of four descriptors: Near Mint or Better, Lightly Played (Excellent), Moderately Played (Very Good) or Heavily Played (Poor). Older listings may still say "Used".

The title, by contrast, is whatever the seller chooses to type. When title and descriptor disagree, the site goes by the descriptor, and the photos settle which one is right. The descriptor list has no separate Damaged step, so read Heavily Played (Poor) listings closely. A bare "Used" label makes no Near Mint claim, and the site reads it as Lightly Played, so such a listing gets no Deal Score. Neither does a listing that states no condition at all: an unstated condition is not a Near Mint claim. The wider eBay checklist is in how to buy Pokémon cards on eBay.

What the site prices, and what it does not

Every card price on Pullnomics is a raw, ungraded Near Mint market price from TCGplayer. TCGplayer keeps a separate market price for each condition, but the site does not receive those, so it prints no price for a Lightly Played, Moderately Played, Heavily Played or Damaged copy.

Until October 8, 2026, the site's method compared a played copy with fixed shares of the Near Mint price: 85 percent for Lightly Played, 70 for Moderately Played, 50 for Heavily Played, 35 for Damaged and 90 when a listing stated no condition. Those shares had no source, and on vintage cards they made a played copy look cheaper than it was: on October 4, 2026, a Lightly Played Base Set Charizard came to $802.85 by the share, against TCGplayer's own Lightly Played market price of $519.12. Since October 8, 2026, the method uses no shares, and a played copy is not scored.

Condition and the 12 percent rule

The Deal Score method on the methodology page, which you apply by hand, compares the landed price, item plus shipping, with TCGplayer's market price. A listing only counts as below market when the landed price is at least 12 percent under it. Since October 8, 2026, a card listing is scored only when its condition is stated as Near Mint, in eBay's condition descriptor or by a title word such as NM or Near Mint. Seller "was $X" discounts count for nothing.

Card prices from here on are TCGplayer market values as of mid-September 2026. Run the method on Gastly, number 177 in Temporal Forces, about $97 Near Mint. A copy stated as Near Mint, listed at $78 with $4 shipping, lands at $82, about 15 percent under market, so it counts as below market; the line is a landed price of about $85. The same copy listed as Lightly Played gets no Deal Score at any price, because the site has no price for a played Gastly to measure it against. Silence works the same way: a Charizard ex, number 199 in 151, about $363 Near Mint, listed with no stated condition and landing at $300, 17 percent under the Near Mint price, gets no Deal Score.

The below-market price shown on a card page, and the cap on the first eBay button, sit 12 percent under the Near Mint market price, about $85 for Gastly, and the cap applies to the item price before shipping. The search does not filter by condition, so a played copy can turn up under that cap, and the method gives it no Deal Score. When the capped search returns nothing, no copy is listed under that cap at the moment. The second button shows every current price, and eBay's own "Save this search" has eBay email new matches.

The method also has floors. The landed price must be at least $4 and the market price at least $5. A landed price under 10 percent of market, about $36 on the Charizard, is treated as a mismatch or a scam, not as a bargain, and since October 9, 2026 so is one under 65 percent of the cheapest copy TCGplayer lists in any condition. At the top end, eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards sold for $200 or more in the US. That is a check on authenticity, and you still price the copy by its condition.

Where a played copy fits

• You are going to play it. In a sleeve, a Lightly Played card does the same job in a game as a Near Mint one.
• It is an expensive card for a binder. Light wear is often confined to the back.

The site has no price for a played copy, so this guide gives no figure for how much less one costs than a Near Mint copy. A played copy that is resold sells at a played price too.

Graded cards are a different market

A slab is priced by grader and grade, not by the raw scale above. A PSA 10 of a modern English card usually sells for more than a raw Near Mint copy, by a gap hobby guides describe as a multiple of the raw price without agreeing on its size, and a PSA 9 for clearly less than the 10. Published rules of thumb for both gaps vary widely, so check recent sold prices for the specific card. Because every price on this site is a raw Near Mint price, there is no graded baseline, so the method leaves graded cards unscored. Raw vs graded covers what is known about graded premiums and the break-even arithmetic of grading.

Condition applies to single cards only. Sealed products, such as a 151 Elite Trainer Box on the sealed EV board, have no condition and are scored against their own market price.

Bottom line

Read the descriptor, then make the photos prove it: back edges and corners for whitening, a tilted shot for surface wear, both sides for creases. Every card price on the site is a Near Mint price. Since October 8, 2026, only a card listing stated as Near Mint gets a Deal Score, and it counts as below market when its landed price, item plus shipping, is at least 12 percent under that price. The site has no price for a Lightly Played, Moderately Played, Heavily Played or Damaged copy, so a played copy, or one whose condition nobody states, gets no score. Slabs are their own market. Start from any card page, reachable from set pages such as 151 or Temporal Forces.