Prepping a Lorcana Card for Grading: Inspection, Honesty, and Safe Packaging

The most valuable step in any grading submission happens before you fill out a form: an honest inspection under good light. Most disappointing grades were predictable. This is our full process for prepping a Lorcana card — and our full ethics, stated plainly: we never clean, press, soak, alter, or restore cards. Inspection and safe packaging only. Anything else misrepresents the card to the grader and to every future owner.

Set up a real inspection

You need three things: a bright, direct light source you can angle (a desk lamp or a phone flashlight works), a clean flat surface, and clean dry hands. Handle the card by its edges. Work over a soft mat, not a hard desk edge where a slip means a dinged corner.

Take the card out of its sleeve. You cannot inspect a card through a sleeve — sleeves hide scratches and add their own reflections.

Surface: where Lorcana foils live or die

Hold the card nearly flat and angle it under the light so the glare sweeps across the face. Rotate it slowly through a full circle. You are looking for:

• Micro-scratches — hairline marks in the foil layer that only appear at specific angles. Lorcana's foil and cold-foil-style finishes show these mercilessly under a grading light, even on pack-fresh cards.
• Print lines — straight, factory-origin lines in the foil, usually running the full card. These come from printing, not handling, but graders count them against the surface all the same.
• Clouding or spotting in the foil finish.
• Indentations — sweep the light across the back too; a dent shows as a shadowed dimple.

Be harshest on the surface check. Surface flaws on foils are the most common reason a "looks mint" Lorcana card comes back with a mid grade.

Curl check

Set the card on the flat surface and look at it edge-on. Lorcana foils curl with humidity, and a visible bow at submission time is a risk. If the card rocks noticeably, do not submit yet — store it correctly (penny sleeve, semi-rigid, stable 45–55% humidity) and let it relax over weeks. Never press it flat under weight or apply heat or moisture; that trades a temporary curl for permanent damage. If it will not settle, reconsider the submission.

Centering: the eyeball method

Perfect centering is rarer than people think, and top grades demand it. You do not need calipers for a first pass:

• Look at the left vs. right border width, then top vs. bottom. Use the frame lines of the card design as your reference.
• If one border is visibly fatter than its opposite at a glance, you are likely outside the tolerance for a top grade. Roughly even at arm's length is promising; obviously lopsided is disqualifying for a 10 and often for a 9.
• Check the back too. Back centering counts, and it is frequently worse than the front.

Lorcana's dark card backs make back-centering misjudgments easy — take your time under good light.

Edges and corners

Run the light along each edge. Look for whitening (tiny chips exposing the pale card core), rough cut points, and nibbles. Then examine all four corners closely — ideally with a loupe or your phone camera zoomed in. Corners that look sharp to the naked eye often show softening at 10x magnification, and graders are effectively looking at that magnification.

The go/no-go decision

Now the honest part. A grading fee is the same whether the card comes back a 10 or a 6. A Lorcana card is usually not worth submitting when:

• You found any crease, bend, or edge tear — stop immediately; that caps the grade low.
• Surface scratches are visible at multiple light angles.
• Centering is obviously off on either side.
• The card's realistic resale value graded, at the grade you actually expect (not the grade you hope for), does not comfortably exceed the card raw plus the fee. Be pessimistic on purpose — the fee is certain, the grade is not.
• You are grading a common or ordinary uncommon "because it looks perfect." Nearly nobody buys graded bulk, and the fee is lost money.

Cards with personal meaning are the exception: grading purely for authentication and preservation of a card you will never sell is a perfectly good reason, as long as you know that is what you are paying for.

Packaging a submission safely

Once a card passes inspection:

1. Penny sleeve, inserted gently, opening up.
2. Semi-rigid holder (Card Saver–style — most graders prefer semi-rigids over toploaders for submissions; check your grader's current requirements).
3. The card should sit fully inside the semi-rigid, not peeking out.
4. Pack semi-rigids snugly between rigid padding so nothing shifts, in a crush-resistant box, with the grader's paperwork.
5. Ship with tracking and appropriate insurance, and photograph each card front and back before it leaves your hands.

The disclosure line

One rule above all: the card goes in exactly as it is. No wiping "just to remove a smudge" (micro-abrasion), no erasers, no pressing, no solvent tricks, no restoration. If a card needs help to look mint, it is not mint, and manipulating it — then submitting or selling it as found — is deception. Reputable graders look for alteration, and an "evidence of trimming/alteration" result follows the card forever.

This inspection-first, disclosure-always process is exactly what Brich House's grading concierge does on your behalf — including telling you, with reasons, when a card should stay home.