Learn How We Grade Baseball Cards: Dean's Cards

by Dean Hanley
Founder and Owner, Dean's Cards

One of the most confusing things for baseball card collectors is understanding how their cards are graded. We get a lot of questions about it. We have been grading baseball cards and other sports and non-sports cards for 12 years, and our grading is based on strict PSA standards -- but we go one step further to take into account a card's "eye appeal" which tends to make our grading standards even more conservative than PSA.

The video featured on this page shows an in-house training session led by Elana Winget, our purchasing manager, and our grading czar -- or actually our czarina. Elana grades our complete vintage sets, and we believe they are the best offered in the hobby, thanks to her vintage baseball card grading expertise.

Elana and I also work closely together to purchase card collections. So if you sell a baseball card collection or other sports card or non-sports card collection to Dean's Cards, chances are you will be speaking to one of us as we develop a custom quote for you.

At Dean's Cards, we constantly strive to make card collecting fun and simple. One of the reasons we wanted to share this grading video is to take the mystery out of a process that can often be confusing for collectors.

The overall goal of our baseball card grading standards is to surpass your expectations on the quality of cards you purchase from us. That's why our website shows scans of the vintage cards we sell, so you can see the cards for yourself online before you purchase them.

I encourage you to read Testimonials from customers who buy baseball cards from Dean's Cards. and who sell baseball cards to Dean's Cards. We are proud of the positive comments we receive from customers, and if you want to buy baseball cards or sell baseball cards, we hope you will visit the Dean's Cards website.

Dean Hanley, founder and owner of DeansCards.com, is considered one of the foremost experts on the subject of vintage baseball cards, other sports and non-sports cards and has a regular column in the Sports Collectors Digest and publishes articles on his blog. Dean has also written two books on vintage sports cards: The Bubble Gum Card War: The Great Bowman & Topps Sets from 1948 to 1955 and Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards.