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Whatnot glossary

Raw card

A card that has not been graded or encapsulated, sold in whatever protection the seller put it in rather than in a slab.

Raw means ungraded. The card came out of a pack or a collection and went straight into a sleeve, a toploader or a magnetic one-touch, with no third-party company assessing its condition. The word travels beyond cards too: raw comics and raw coins mean exactly the same thing.

Selling raw puts the condition burden on you. There is no label to point at, so the photos, the on-camera look and your description are the whole story, and the honest way to do it is to name the flaws before the buyer finds them. Centering, corners, edges and surface are what buyers are looking at, and "sharp corners, slightly off-center left to right" builds far more trust than "mint" ever will.

Raw is also where the margin lives. A card bought raw and graded well is the arbitrage a lot of the hobby runs on, which is why raw singles and raw lots stay in demand on live shows. It is also why buyers inspect them closely, and why a returned raw card is usually a description problem rather than a shipping one.