What Affects Pokémon Card Centring and Why It Matters

Centring is one of four categories graders assess, and it's the one that frustrates collectors the most. Unlike surface scratches or corner wear, centring is entirely out of your control. It's determined at the factory and there's nothing you can do about it.

What Is Centring?

Centring refers to how well the card's printed image is positioned within its borders. Perfect centring means the borders are equal width on all four sides. In practice, perfect centring is rare. Most cards have some degree of variance.

Centring is measured as a ratio. "50/50" is perfect. "55/45" means one border is slightly wider than the opposite one. "60/40" is noticeably off. "70/30" is significantly off-centre.

Grading companies typically allow up to about 55/45 for a 10, 60/40 for a 9, and 65/35 for an 8. Beyond 70/30, the card won't score above a 6 or 7 regardless of how perfect everything else is.

Front vs Back

Both sides get evaluated. A card can have perfect front centring but terrible back centring, or vice versa. The back is often worse because the pattern is more uniform, making offset borders more obvious.

Some graders weight front centring slightly more than back, but both matter. If you're checking centring before submitting, don't forget to flip the card over.

Why Some Sets Have Worse Centring

Card centring depends on how accurately the cutting machines line up with the printed sheets. Minor alignment shifts during production affect every card on that sheet, which is why some print runs produce consistently off-centre cards.

Certain sets are known for bad centring. Evolving Skies had widespread centring issues in many print runs. Some Japanese sets have better centring than their English counterparts because of differences in production equipment and quality control standards.

Can You Fix Bad Centring?

No. Any attempt to trim or alter a card's dimensions to fix centring would be detectable and would result in the card being flagged as altered or receiving no grade at all. Centring is what it is. You either got lucky at the factory or you didn't.

The Silver Lining

Perfect centring is rare enough that collectors actively seek it out. A perfectly centred card in a 10 slab carries extra prestige. Some collectors specifically look for "all 10s" sub-grades where centring, corners, edges, and surface all scored perfectly. These cards command premiums above standard 10s.