How to verify a graded card's certification number
A counterfeit slab can copy a label. It cannot put a matching record in the grader's database. This is the check that costs nothing and catches the most.
Do this first, before anything else
Read the certification number off the label and enter it in the grader's own lookup. Every major grader runs one, free, with no account required.
You are checking three things at once: that the number exists, that the card it describes is the card in front of you, and that the grade matches. A fake label often carries a real cert number copied from a genuine card — the number resolves, but to a different card.
- Does the record exist at all?
- Does the card it names match the card in the holder — year, set, number, player?
- Does the grade match the label, including qualifiers?
- For autographs, does the record show the autograph grade the label claims?
What a mismatch means
A cert number that returns nothing is not proof of a fake on its own — very old certificates and some crossover records are incomplete — but it moves the burden. Ask the seller for the grader's own record before money changes hands.
A cert number that returns a DIFFERENT card is the strongest single signal available to a buyer. It means the label and the card disagree, and there is no innocent version of that on a slab being sold to you.
Photograph the cert, not just the card
When buying remotely, ask for a photograph of the label with the cert number legible, and run the lookup yourself before paying. A seller who will not photograph the cert number has told you something.
Verify it yourself
FLOAT prices collectibles from realized sales. A valuation assumes the item is what its label says — which is why these checks come first.