We carefully selected polycarbonate (rather than its cheaper and more common cousin polystyrene) for several reasons. First, it is significantly more impact-resistant than polystyrene, giving our cases a much greater resistance to damage like dropping your case, throwing it across the room, or even driving over it - though we don’t recommend doing any of those things! Second, polycarbonate is also significantly more UV resistant than polystyrene, protecting the inks in your card better than other options. Lastly, polycarbonate is also resistant to many different chemical compounds including acids, grease, oils, alcohol, and many other substances. This makes it ideal for protecting your cards.

The Corning™ Gorilla Glass™ front and back of the case was selected to prevent scratches from affecting the incredible clarity of our polycarbonate case. Gorilla Glass™ has an exceptionally high scratch resistance - it’s the same glass you see used on iPhones - and also resists shatters and cracks. This means that your graded cards stay clearer longer, and you won’t need to use plastic protectors (unless you want to).

Lastly, we include a silicone bumper to provide another extra layer of protection. This bumper comes free with each purchase, and increases the durability of the case to an almost unbelievable amount. We’ve dropped our cases from multiple stories up, thrown them hard against concrete floors, and even run over them with our cars without damaging the cards inside.

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As cards have increased in value, fake cases, fake labels, and fake cards have become more prevalent. Many older cases also fail to protect cards from harmful ultraviolet light or fail to stand up to even moderate stress or pressure. Rare Edition has taken steps to both improve the security of our cases and labels, as well as increasing the protection around your cards.

It is impossible to completely prevent inauthentic items from being created. While we will not go into detail about our security measures in our cases and labels, we can say that we have developed multiple security features that make it significantly more challenging to duplicate our products and allow Rare Edition to authenticate the case and contents itself. These features include unique signatures attached to each graded card that allow us to both authenticate as well as track any submitted card.

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Every card sent in to Rare Edition passes through the same patent-pending process, allowing us to grade cards with an exceptional degree of accuracy and consistency. Since this is an area many of our customers have questions on, we’ve provided a brief explanation of the process below:

First, a high-resolution scan of the front and the back of the card is taken. Prior to scanning the scanning station is wiped down for dust, the cards are carefully removed from their holders, and our scanners may use gloves for high-value or rare cards. The two scanned images are verified by our team members, cards are re-scanned if needed, and the images are sent to the next step in our process.

Second, our Computer Vision technology splits each image into ten core components (four corners, four edges, centering, and surface) and the twenty components are then processed. A combination of algorithms are used to identify any damage or changes to the card, and the output of those algorithms is translated into an easily understood visual representation for our grading team, as well as a suggested grade for each of the twenty components.

Third, our grading team reviews the data generated by the analysis and compares it to the physical card itself. False positives, false negatives, or missed areas are flagged by the grading team and fed back into our algorithms so they continue to improve over time. This creates a final grade that is often reviewed by our expert Senior Graders to confirm that nothing was missed.

After the final grade has been reviewed and accepted by the grading team, a full grading report is automatically generated. This grading report includes the high-resolution scan of the card (front and back), the individual components of the cards, a summary of the damage seen (if any), and the overall grade and subgrades for the card.

Like every company that works in the machine learning or AI industry, our methods and procedures will always be updated and improved over time as we get more data and feedback from our grading team. As our methods improve, we will occasionally release new “versions” of our grading algorithms. When these new versions are released, every customer will be able to see both their original grade as well as the “latest” grade for their card, ensuring that our customers may always compare our cards to the latest and most accurate grades possible.

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Each one of Rare Edition’s patent-pending cases starts with extra-clear polycarbonate. This polycarbonate is molded into the top and bottom portions of our case, with special details added to discourage counterfeiting. Decorative elements are then hot-stamped onto the slab or glass, including our logo as well as the black bordering around the case.

Our labels are printed on some of the highest quality printing machines available, giving us incredible precision and durability. Card details are applied through thermal transfer, allowing us to create a label that resists fading over time and is precisely made to display your card’s finest details and grade.

Once at our facility the two case pieces are taken to our encapsulation station, where the bottom is placed on an ultrasonic welder. The card is placed inside the case, and the card's label is printed. The label is placed inside of the case along with an NFC chip that allows any modern smartphone to view the grading report for the card. The rest of the case is placed over the card and label, and we use an ultrasonic welder to encapsulate the card to seal the case closed. Our Operations then applies precisely cut Corning™ Gorilla Glass™ to both the front and back of the case at our warehouse, ensuring that the polycarbonate cannot be scratched or altered. This creates a water-resistant, highly durable, and UV-protected case for your card.

You can read more about our case and protection in our article, The Rare Edition Case.

At Rare Edition, we take many steps to ensure the safety of the cards you send in to us. We monitor your cards throughout our process, and every interaction our team takes with your cards is tracked internally. Multiple photos are taken along the way, including when the card is prepared for scanning and when the card is encapsulated.

Any card not actively being processed is stored in our Class 2 vault. Our vault, which includes multiple secondary secure storage areas inside the vault for extra security around high-value cards, is a restricted-access area and multiple closed-circuit cameras are always present and recording, as are senior members of our team. When working hours are over, any cards on the floor (raw or graded but unshipped) are secured inside our vault.

If you have any further questions about our security, coverage, or policies or you want to discuss special procedures for your high-value cards, you may contact our support team.

Our pre-sale has several options, ranging from a limited number of $19 and $29 options to our limited-edition $49 Collectors Edition and our exceptional $149 Founders Edition. We expect our Collectors and Founders Editions to begin being processed in early 2022.

For our full launch, we will offer three price tiers with different turnaround times:

The $29 Standard submission costs $29 per card, and each card receives a full grading report, the Rare Slab, and a free bumper. Our turnaround times are within 60 business days for cards submitted on the Standard submission.

The $49 Plus submission costs $49 per card, and each card receives a full grading report, the Rare Slab, and a free bumper. Our turnaround times are within 30 business days for cards submitted on the Plus submission.

The $149 Elite submission costs $149 per card, and each card receives a full grading report, the Rare Slab, and a free bumper. Our turnaround times are within 14 business days for cards submitted on the Elite submission.

Standard, Plus, and Elite submissions will be opened up after we have completed our Founders and Collectors Edition grading requests.

Rare Edition does not require our customers to increase their tier for more expensive cards; cards of all types and values may be submitted at any price point, and customers will not be upcharged based on the value of the card they submit. The prices above do not include shipping and insurance, which is calculated when the customer submits their cards.

We plan to start allowing pre-sale customers to send in their cards in very early 2022; This is due to the global supply chain and shipping issues. Once we have committed delivery dates for our materials and components, we will start allowing our pre-sale customers to begin sending their cards to our facility, where they will be processed and stored until they are graded by our expert graders and proprietary grading process.

For our larger launch, we expect for regular sales to follow shortly after we complete our pre-sale submissions.

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When we open up submissions in early 2022, only standard size sports cards (2.5” x 3.5” cards, square corners) of up to 55pt in thickness will be accepted. This is so that our initial cases may best encase, support, and protect the cards you send. As we tool and create new case sizes, we fully expect to support non-standard sizes (tobacco cards, 70+ pt, TCG, and rounded edges) soon after we have our full launch in 2022. The exact time when we will support specific card sizes depends on manufacturing times, logistics, and the quality control measures we take to ensure that our cases always protect your cards with a minimum of movement inside the case.

We expect our pre-sale cards to be submitted in early 2022 and start being returned shortly after. Founders Edition purchasers have the highest priority in the queue, followed by Collectors Editions and then Standard editions. The time you get your card back is dependent on when you submit your card and the edition you purchased. Some issues may result in a longer turnaround time than expected; this includes incorrect submissions (cards submitted without a packing slip, cards not in penny sleeves / semi-rigid holders, etc.) or other problems found in the grading process. We’ll keep our customers updated if any delays occur.

Lastly, customers are not required to immediately use their pre-sale purchases. Customers may hold on to their pre-sale purchases until the future, when we will be grading a wider variety of cards (70+ pt cards, TCG cards like Pokemon, etc.). Pre-sale purchases do not expire.

Our customers receive the following for their special pre-order options:

Collector's Edition:

- Faster turnaround, upgraded to the highest regular tier
- 1x Sports Card grading queue slot (Submissions Open: Early 2022)
- A numbered label that indicates your card was one of the Collector’s Edition cards graded by Rare Edition
- 50% off a second sports card grade (up to our $49 tier) in 2022 after Rare Edition’s full launch.
- (Ended 12/31/21) 500 Giveaway Entries for Rare Edition’s Grail Card and prizes
- Your name added to our dedicated ‘Thank You’ Page as a supporter of Rare Edition

Founder's Edition:

- Fastest turnaround, and priority over every other submission
- 1x Sports Card grading queue slot (Submissions Open: Early 2022)
- A unique, numbered label showing your card was one of 5,000 Founder’s Edition cards graded by Rare Edition
- A free sports card grade (up to a $49 value) in 2022 after Rare Edition’s full launch.
- (Ended 12/31/21) 1000 Giveaway Entries for Rare Edition’s Grail Card and prizes
- Your name added to our dedicated ‘Thank You’ Page as a founding member of Rare Edition
- Be part of the founding team we use to grow Rare Edition for the future

We are offering a limited number of Standard submissions, priced at $29 for a Standard submission and $19 for a handful of early bird submissions. Our Collector's Edition price is $49 per slot, while our Founder's Edition is $149 per slot. Different pricing tiers will be available in the future, but our Collectors and Founders bundles will never be offered again outside of the pre-order.