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. The Pullnomics method values those steps with working factors against the Near Mint market price: 1.00, 0.85, 0.70 and 0.50, plus 0.35 for a Damaged card and 0.90 when a listing states no condition at all.

Two rules follow. First, a condition word in a listing title is a claim and the photos are the evidence. Second, a played copy is only a bargain against its own adjusted price, not against the Near Mint price shown on a card page. A Lightly Played card at 15 percent under Near Mint market is a fairly priced card, not a find.

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, price the card at the worse one and let the photos settle it. The descriptor list has no separate Damaged step, so read Heavily Played (Poor) listings closely. A bare "Used" label makes no Near Mint claim, so price that card as Lightly Played at best. When a listing states no condition at all, the site's working factor is 0.90: assume the card is not Near Mint until the photos prove otherwise. The wider eBay checklist is in how to buy Pokémon cards on eBay.

The multipliers, applied to real cards

Every card price on Pullnomics is a raw, ungraded Near Mint market price from TCGplayer. The multipliers are the site's working factors for comparing a played copy with that number. They are not a TCGplayer publication, and real discounts vary from card to card, but they give you a consistent yardstick. Prices are as of mid-September 2026 and move daily.

• Charizard ex, number 199 in 151, about $363 Near Mint: about $309 Lightly Played, about $254 Moderately Played, about $182 Heavily Played, about $127 Damaged, and about $327 when no condition is stated.
• Gastly, number 177 in Temporal Forces, about $97: about $82, about $68 and about $48 down the same three steps.
• Umbreon VMAX, number 215 in Evolving Skies, about $2,283: about $1,941, about $1,598 and about $1,142.
• Eiscue ex, number 222 in Obsidian Flames, about $6.49: about $5.52 Lightly Played and about $4.54 Moderately Played.

The same percentages lead to opposite decisions. One step down on Umbreon VMAX is worth about $342. One step down on Eiscue ex saves about a dollar, so on cheap cards you simply buy the Near Mint copy.

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 the adjusted market price, TCGplayer market times the condition multiplier. A listing only counts as below market when the landed price is at least 12 percent under the adjusted one. Seller "was $X" discounts count for nothing.

Run it on Gastly. Suppose a Lightly Played copy is listed at $78 with $4 shipping, $82 landed. Against the Near Mint price of about $97 that looks like 15 percent off. Against the Lightly Played figure of about $82 it is full price. To qualify, a Lightly Played Gastly has to land at about $72 or less, and a Moderately Played one at about $60 or less. Silence works the same way. Suppose a Charizard ex with no stated condition lands at $300. That is 17 percent under Near Mint market but only about 8 percent under the 0.90 figure of about $327, so it does not qualify until it lands near $288.

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. A played copy that turns up under that cap is not automatically below market: redo the sum with its multiplier and the shipping added. 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 adjusted market at least $5, which is why a Moderately Played Eiscue ex at about $4.54 falls outside it. 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. At the top end, eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards sold for $250 or more in the US. That is a check on authenticity, and you still price the copy by its condition.

When a played copy is the smart buy

• You are going to play it. In a sleeve, a Lightly Played card does the same job as a Near Mint one, at about 85 percent of the price by the site's factor.
• It is an expensive card for a binder. Light wear is often confined to the back. A Lightly Played Umbreon VMAX at its adjusted price leaves about $342 in your pocket, and a Moderately Played one about $685.

It is the wrong buy when you intend to grade the card, when the card is cheap enough that the saving is a dollar or two, or when you expect to resell soon, since you will be selling at the played price too.

Graded cards are a different market

A slab is priced by grader and grade, not by the raw scale above. As a rule of thumb, PSA 10 copies of modern cards often sell for about 2.5 to 4 times the raw Near Mint price, and PSA 9 copies for about 1.1 to 1.4 times. 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 works through that decision.

The multipliers apply to single cards only. Sealed products, such as a 151 Elite Trainer Box on the sealed EV board, carry no condition factor.

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. Price the copy you are actually being offered, at 85 percent of Near Mint market for Lightly Played, 70 for Moderately Played, 50 for Heavily Played, 35 for Damaged and 90 when nobody says. Add shipping, and only call it below market when the landed price is at least 12 percent under that adjusted figure. Buy played when you will play the card or when the saving is real money, buy Near Mint when the card is cheap, and treat slabs as their own market. Start from any card page, reachable from set pages such as 151 or Temporal Forces.