Who we are
A grading company built by people who were tired of waiting a season to find out what their cards were worth.
We started grading in 2022. Since then we’ve built our own AI grading engine, our own slab, and a public database that anyone can search without an account. This page is the whole story — who we are, what we do, and how we do it.
What we do
We grade trading cards, seal them, and publish the result where anyone can check it.
Every card, the same treatment
- A grade from 1 to 10, in half-point steps.
- Four subgrades on every card — surface, centering, corners, edges. Not an upsell, not a premium tier. Every card, every time.
- A sealed Crown slab with its own nine-digit serial number.
- A permanent public record at crowndatabase.com, live the moment the card is graded.
- A written condition report explaining the grade rather than just asserting it.
What we grade
Pokémon, One Piece, Dragon Ball, sports, Disney, and a long tail of everything else — 6,727 different sets so far, across licensed and unlicensed releases, English and Japanese and Chinese.
We also grade film cells under our FilmVault line, and we’ll re-grade older Crown slabs into the current standard through Crown Ascension.
From $12 per card. No membership, no minimum, no bulk-tier gatekeeping.
How we do it
Six steps, the same for a $12 card and a $2,000 one.
Submission & receipt
You fill out the online form and ship. We confirm the moment your package is checked in, so you’re never wondering whether it arrived.
Intake documentation
Every card is photographed and logged before anything else happens to it. That record is what any question later gets settled against.
AI evaluation
Our grading engine scans each card and measures centering, edges, corners and surface. A machine doesn’t get tired on card four hundred, which is the entire point.
Human double-grading
Our graders review every card the AI has assessed. The engine brings consistency; people bring the judgement calls it can’t make.
Imaging & encapsulation
Final images are captured for the public record, then the card is sealed in its Crown slab with its serial number and subgrades on the label.
Publication & return
The record goes live on the Crown Database and your cards ship back. Days, not months.
What the grades actually look like
Every grade we’ve ever issued, out of the 62,128 cards graded as of August 2026. We publish this because a grading company that only ever hands out tens isn’t grading.
Modern cards in good condition grade high — that’s true everywhere, not just here. What matters is that the bottom of the scale gets used: 1,433 cards graded 7.5 or lower, including 659 that came back a 1. We’d rather tell you your card is a 6 than sell you a 9 you can’t defend.
The database is the point
Plenty of companies will put your card in plastic. The part we actually care about is what happens after.
Open by default
Every Crown card is public from the moment it’s graded — searchable by anyone, with no account and no fee. If you’re buying a Crown slab from a stranger, you can confirm it in about ten seconds.
That isn’t a marketing feature. It’s the whole reason a grade means anything: a number on a label is only worth what you can verify behind it.
What’s in the record
The card, the set, the year, the grade, all four subgrades, the condition report, and the images. Permanent and dated.
Our public database opened in November 2024, and holds 62,128 records today. Cards we graded before that can be brought into it through Crown Ascension.
Our story
Crown Grading began in 2022 with a straightforward goal: to provide collectors with dependable, high-quality grading at a price that makes sense. What started as a passion for collectibles has grown into a company trusted with hundreds of thousands of cards from collectors, sellers, and businesses across the country.
In 2024, we introduced serialized certification, giving every newly graded card a unique identity and a permanent place in the Crown Database. Since then, we have continued improving our grading process, technology, protective holders, and online tools while remaining committed to careful evaluation, consistent standards, and personal service.
We understand that every collectible has a story and that the cards entrusted to us often hold meaning far beyond their monetary value. That is why every submission—whether it contains one treasured card or thousands—is handled with the same care and attention.
Crown is proudly building for the future of collecting: making professional grading more accessible, transparent, and useful for everyone.
Talk to us
A person answers. If you’re weighing whether to send something in, ask first — we’d rather talk you out of grading a card than take your money for it.
Get in touch
- support@crowngradingpro.com
- 832-392-2008
- Conroe, Texas
Before you ship
Worth reading: the submission walkthrough for how to package cards, and the submission agreement for the terms your submission runs under.
New to it? The pre-grade estimator gives you an idea of where a card lands before you commit.