What do NM, LP, MP, HP, and DMG mean for trading-card condition?

What each grade actually means

Near Mint (NM): Looks straight from the pack. No edge wear, no whitening, no surface scratches under angled light.

Lightly Played (LP): Minor edge wear or tiny surface marks visible only on close inspection. Still tournament-legal sleeved.

Moderately Played (MP): Obvious wear — edge whitening, minor scratches, or small bends. Tournament-legal sleeved but visibly used.

Heavily Played (HP): Significant wear, creases, scuffs, or print defects. Playable but cosmetically poor.

Damaged (DMG): Tears, water damage, ink, or warping. Often only useful as proxy or for value cards where the print itself still has demand.

How shops apply this in practice

Most card-shop POS systems list the same SKU at four or five price points by condition. Customers buying singles for play often pick LP or MP for cost; collectors and competitive players pay the NM premium.

Marketplaces like TCGplayer and Cardmarket use the same grades, which is why condition-aware listing is a hard requirement for any platform that syncs inventory across them.

Related terms

• Market price vs low — TCGplayer market price is an algorithmic average of recent sold prices across conditions. TCGplayer low is the lowest currently-listed price. Market is more stable and reflects actual transactions; low is a snapshot of the cheapest seller right now and can be skewed by a single outlier.
• Buylist — A buylist is the set of prices a card shop offers customers for cards they want to sell or trade in. Most shops publish two prices per card: a lower cash rate and a higher store-credit rate.