Buying With Confidence
What the card conditions mean
Every card here is conditioned by hand. That means a person picks it up, looks at the front and the back under a light, and decides. No machine, no AI. We follow the TCGplayer conditioning standard, which is the same scale most card sellers use.
You do not have to take our word for it though. Every card gets its own photos, front and back, and the card in the photo is the exact card you get. Not a stock image, not another copy of the same card. The photos are the real description. If the photos and our wording do not agree, go with the photos, and please tell us so we can fix it.
The examples below are real cards from the shop, at the condition we gave them.
NM
Near Mint
Looks like it just came out of the pack. Sharp corners, clean edges, and a surface with no scratches or clouding. If you go hunting under a bright light you might find a tiny printing or handling mark, but nothing you would notice holding it. A Near Mint card can go straight into a binder or a sleeved deck.
LP
Lightly Played
Used, but it still looks great. Expect a bit of edge wear, slightly soft corners, a small scratch, or some shine on the surface. You will see it if you tilt the card to the light, but not straight on. Lightly Played is the sweet spot if you care more about owning the card than owning a perfect one.
MP
Moderately Played
Wear you can see without looking for it. Whitening around the border, rounded corners, scuffs or scratches on the surface, and sometimes a light crease that does not go through the card. Still completely fine to play with in sleeves, and a cheaper way to own a card you actually want.
A card in this shape was somebody's favourite. Wear like this usually comes from a card getting picked up and looked at, over and over.
HP
Heavily Played
Heavy wear that you cannot miss. Lots of whitening, soft or bent corners, real creases, scratching, or a bit of water damage. The card is all there and so is the artwork, but it has had a life. We price it accordingly and the photos will show you exactly what is going on with it.
We like to call these well loved. A card only ends up like this by being carried around. Traded on the playground at recess, kept in a coat pocket, tucked under a hat on the walk home, shuffled with no sleeves because nobody had sleeves yet. That is how most of these cards spent their first few years, and honestly that is the whole appeal for a lot of people. This one actually got played with.
DMG
Damaged
Past heavy wear. Deep creases, tears, water damage, writing on the card, or anything that affects the card itself. We hardly ever list these. It has to be something genuinely special, usually old or rare enough that you would not get near a clean copy. When we do, the photos and the description will spell out exactly what is wrong with it.
Damaged does not mean worthless. These cards survived, and they are still a real piece of Pokémon history. Some people go looking for the roughest copy of a famous card on purpose, right down to collecting the lowest slab numbers, because of the story that comes with it. If a card made it this far and you can still see the art, somebody out there wants it.
Conditioning is a judgement call, and doing it all day means getting one wrong once in a while. When a card is sitting right between two conditions, we give it the lower one. We would rather you open the envelope and think the card looks better than you expected.
If you look at the photos and think we got one wrong, there is a “Think we called this condition wrong?” link on every card's page, or you can email office@leisurebeamgames.com. We will have another look and relist the card properly. If it is already on the way to you, we will make it right. Our Refund Policy has the details.
