Know your cards · Reference · 10 min read

The TCG dictionary

Moonbreon? Slab? Comps? God pack? Every piece of hobby slang you'll hear at the card shop, decoded.

Every hobby has its dialect, and this one moves fast — half the vocabulary was invented on YouTube in the last five years. Here's what everyone at the card shop actually means.

Opening & pulling

Pull: The card you got from a pack. "Big pull" = a good one. The verb, too: "I pulled a Moonbreon" is the hobby's happiest sentence.
Hit: A pull that matters — an ultra rare or better. A pack with no hit is a "whiff".
God pack: An extremely rare pack where every card is a top rarity. Real in some Japanese sets, mostly legend elsewhere.
Rip: To open packs. "Rip and ship" streams open packs live and mail buyers whatever's inside.
ETB: Elite Trainer Box — the retail box with packs, sleeves, dice, and energy cards. The default gift-shaped product.
Booster box: A sealed box of 36 booster packs (modern English sets). The standard unit for people who open a lot.
Pull rates: The odds of hitting each rarity in a set, estimated by people who open a lot of boxes and count.

The cards themselves

Alt art: Alternate-art version of a card — same Pokémon, special full-scene artwork. The modern chase category.
Chase card: The card everyone opening the set is hoping for. Every set has one or two.
Grail: Your personal ultimate card — the one you'd build a collection around. (Yes, that's the grail in GrailGauge.)
Moonbreon: Community name for Umbreon VMAX alt art from Evolving Skies — the flagship modern chase card.
Zard: Charizard. "Base Zard" = the 1999 Base Set holo Charizard.
Bulk: The commons and uncommons left after the hits — sold by the thousand, literally by weight.
Secret rare: A card numbered above the set count (e.g. 205/165). Includes rainbow and gold cards.
Promo: A card released outside a normal set — in tins, boxes, or at events. Marked with a black promo stamp or star.
1st Edition: The first print run of vintage sets, marked with a "1st Edition" stamp. Worth far more than the later "unlimited" run.
Shadowless: An early Base Set print with no drop shadow beside the art frame — between 1st Edition and unlimited in rarity and price.

Condition & grading

Raw: Ungraded — the card as it left the pack, not in a slab.
Slab: A graded card in its sealed case.
PSA / BGS / CGC: The three major grading companies. PSA has the most market recognition; BGS's flawless "Black Label 10" is the hardest grade in the hobby.
Gem mint: A perfect 10 — sharp corners, clean edges, flawless surface, centered artwork.
NM / LP / MP / HP: The raw-card condition ladder: Near Mint, Lightly Played, Moderately Played, Heavily Played. Each step down cuts the price hard.
Centering: How evenly the artwork sits between the card's borders. The silent killer of would-be 10s — check it before you submit anything.
Whitening: White wear along a card's back edges where the blue ink has chipped. Instantly visible to graders, easily missed by sellers.
Crossover: Sending a card graded by one company to another hoping for an equal-or-better grade in the new slab.

The market

Comps: Comparable recent sales — the real price of a card, as opposed to what sellers are asking. Always check comps before buying or selling.
Market price: TCGplayer's rolling estimate based on actual sales — the number our price pages track.
Spread: The gap between what buyers pay and sellers ask. A wide spread means an illiquid, hard-to-price card.
Vaulted: Stored with a marketplace's storage service instead of shipped — common for higher-value singles.
Pump: A sudden price spike, often hype-driven and often temporary. Watch a pump for a few weeks before trusting it.
Sealed: Unopened product — packs, boxes, ETBs. Collected as-is on the bet that scarcity grows over time.
Singles: Individual cards bought directly — the cheapest way to get any specific card. Buying singles beats gambling on packs, every time, if what you want is the card.
LGS: Local game store. Buy something there occasionally; it's where the hobby actually lives.

At the table

Meta: The current competitive landscape — which decks win tournaments right now. Meta shifts move single prices.
Rotation: The annual date when older sets become illegal in the Standard format. Rotation announcements move markets.
Standard / Expanded: The two main tournament formats: Standard allows recent sets only; Expanded reaches back to 2011.
Deck out: To lose by having no cards left to draw. Also a legitimate strategy for making it happen to your opponent.
Prizes: The six face-down cards you win the game by collecting. See our how-to-play guide.
Tech: A niche card slotted into a deck specifically to counter certain matchups.
Mill: Sending cards from a deck straight to the discard pile — the engine behind deck-out strategies.
Donk: Winning on the first possible turn before the opponent can act. Rare, legal, infuriating.