What do card conditions like Near Mint mean?

Single cards of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game come from local game stores and from marketplaces such as Cardmarket in Europe, TCGplayer in the United States and CardTrader on both sides of the Atlantic, and every copy offered on a marketplace carries a condition. The condition is a short name for how much wear the card shows, from fresh out of the pack to bent, torn or written on.

Riot sets no condition scale for Riftbound, and neither the Core Rules nor the Tournament Rules mention Near Mint. The scales belong to the marketplaces, which use the same scale for the cards of every game they sell. TCGplayer and Cardmarket use different names and judge wear with different strictness, which matters as soon as you get cards from both, and CardTrader has a scale of its own.

What does Near Mint mean?

Near Mint, written NM, is a card that looks almost unplayed. TCGplayer describes a nearly unmarked surface, crisp corners and clean edges, with at most slight edge wear or a couple of minor scratches. Cardmarket is stricter: its Near Mint card looks as if it was never played without sleeves, may show a very few tiny white spots on the border, and may not have a single scratch. Cardmarket sums up the grade in one word, booster-fresh.

Near Mint is the best condition that matters for Riftbound. TCGplayer has no Mint or Gem Mint condition at all. Cardmarket has a Mint grade for a card that is perfect front and back, but it notes that a Mint copy of a new card is worth about the same as a Near Mint one.

Which conditions does TCGplayer use below Near Mint?

TCGplayer has four more conditions, and it judges foil cards by the same standards as plain ones.

• Lightly Played (LP) cards may have minor edge wear, scuffs or scratches, but nothing severe.
• Moderately Played (MP) cards can show wear on the edges and the surface, scratches and even bends with creases, as long as the card is still sound.
• Heavily Played (HP) cards show a major amount of wear, with creases and whitening, but they must still be sound, and it must be possible to tell that they are genuine.
• Damaged cards go further, with tears, splitting or other harm to the card. TCGplayer does not allow a card covered in food or liquid to be listed at all.

How do Cardmarket's conditions differ?

Cardmarket uses seven grades: Mint, Near Mint (NM), Excellent (EX), Good (GD), Light Played (LP), Played (PL) and Poor (PO). Cardmarket compares the five below Near Mint with the American names like this.

• Excellent looks as if the card was used for a few games without sleeves. It comes closest to TCGplayer's Lightly Played.
• Good shows strong wear all around, with many white spots and scratches, but no bends and no water damage. It comes closest to Moderately Played.
• Light Played looks as if the card was used without sleeves for a long time, though it is still fine in a sleeved deck. Cardmarket compares it to the American grade Played.
• Played is as bad as regular use without sleeves can make a card. It comes closest to Heavily Played.
• Poor is a card that is destroyed or has been tampered with, for example with inked borders.

The name to watch is Light Played. On TCGplayer, Lightly Played is the step right below Near Mint. On Cardmarket, Light Played is three steps below it, and Cardmarket itself warns against mixing the two up. A card listed as LP in Europe is in clearly worse shape than a card listed as LP in the United States.

Which conditions does CardTrader use?

CardTrader's condition guide lists five conditions: Near Mint, Slightly Played, Moderately Played, Played and Poor. It says that Mint is not used on the platform, so Near Mint is the best condition for a card that no grading company has graded. A Near Mint card there has never been played and shows at most two or three tiny imperfections, such as micro-scratches or dots. Slightly Played is the step right below Near Mint, the place where TCGplayer puts Lightly Played. Played is the fourth of the five steps, a card with obvious wear that must still be playable in a tournament, and Poor is a card with severe damage, such as deep creases or water damage.

What lowers the condition of a Riftbound card?

TCGplayer and Cardmarket both look at the corners and edges, the surface on both sides and whether the card still lies flat.

• Whitening means small white spots along the edges and corners, which come from shuffling and handling.
• Scratches and scuffs mark the surface. Cardmarket also counts clouding, a dull patch from tiny damage to the surface, which rules out Near Mint there.
• Bends and creases change the shape of the card. On Cardmarket a bent card can be no better than Light Played.
• Water damage takes a card down to Light Played or worse on Cardmarket and to Moderately Played or worse on TCGplayer.
• Anything added after printing, such as marker, a stamp or a signature, is an alteration. TCGplayer treats an altered card as Damaged, and Cardmarket grades inked or scribbled cards Poor.

A signature or stamp printed on the card is a different matter. The signed cards of Riftbound carry the artist's signature in foil as part of the printing, and promos with a printed stamp such as TOP 8 are printings of their own, not altered cards.

A card can also leave the pack with a printing fault, such as a miscut. TCGplayer counts a significant miscut as Damaged, while Cardmarket does not count production errors against the grade but asks the seller to mention them.

A scratch shows more on a foil surface, and Cardmarket asks sellers to check foils for creases and clouding with special care. In Riftbound that covers the cards collectors look at most closely, since every Rare and Epic in a booster pack is foil, and so is every showcase printing. The row below shows a foil Rare, Loose Cannon, a foil Epic, Ahri, Inquisitive, the signed Loose Cannon from Origins and the signed Master of Shadows from Vendetta.

Does a played card still work in a deck?

Yes. Condition changes nothing about what a card does. At a tournament the one thing that counts is that a card is not marked, which means it must not be possible to identify it without seeing its face (Tournament Rules 423.2). Scratches, discoloration and bends can all make a card marked (rule 703.6.a), and sleeved cards are checked inside their sleeves (rule 423.3). Cardmarket's grades follow the same line: a Near Mint card would pass even without a sleeve, a Good card or worse would count as marked in an unsleeved deck, and a Light Played card is still fine in a sleeved one. For a deck that lives in sleeves, a copy a step or two below Near Mint does the same job. A sleeve also keeps a card from wearing further, because it takes the scuffs of shuffling and sliding across the table, and sleeves are the first step in protecting your Riftbound cards.

Where do grading and prices come in?

A grading company puts a number on condition instead of a name: PSA, a large grading service, uses a scale from 1 for Poor to 10 for Gem Mint. A graded card is sealed in a hard plastic holder, so it can no longer be played, and the grader charges a fee for each card. For that reason whether to grade your Riftbound cards depends on what a card is worth and what you mean to do with it.

Condition is one of several things that set the price of a card. A worn copy sells for less than one that still looks as it did in the pack, and what decides the price of a Riftbound card puts condition beside the printing, the decks that play a card and the champion on it. Every card and every printing on the card list has a page of its own, where its current price is shown, and the collection on this site keeps count of the copies you own.