As mentioned in the first part of our card collecting glossary, collecting is a serious hobby and a multi-billion dollar industry. That’s why we divide our card collecting glossary in parts, and second part is here. Enjoy!

GRADING: The process of which a card’s physical condition is inspected and given a grade by a third-party specialist. The grades are in numeric value ranking from 1-10, 10 being the highest grade a card can receive. Grading is done by the third-party specialist or company that is experienced in trading card conditions and can grade based on the current condition of a card and determine the card's value. Three of the industry’s leading grading companies are: Beckett (BGS), Professional Sports Authenticators (PSA), and International Sports Cards Guaranty (SCG)

FOIL: A metallic material applied to parts of the design of a trading card during the printing process.

HOBBY BOX: A box of trading cards that contain more cards than a retail or blaster box. Hobby boxes typically include more “hits”  than a standard pack or retail box. These boxes are typically sold online at the manufacturers site, distributors, or traditional trading card shops (Hobby Shops)

RETAIL BOX: Boxes that are packaged and distributed strictly for large retailers. These boxes typically don’t have the odds of marketed content as hobby boxes and are lower in price. Examples are Blaster Boxes, Mega Boxes, Fast Break Boxes, etc.

ONE-OF-ONE: A trading card in a set that is printed as only 1 version of the card and only card in existence. It’s numbered with 1/1.

RAINBOW: The color scheme of the complete series of all parallel cards of a specific player.