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A GemRate ID is GemRate’s unique identifier for a card as cataloged by a single grading company. It’s the key you use across the API: it’s returned by cert and spec lookups, and it’s what GET /v1/cards/{gemrate_id}/population takes. A GemRate ID is consistent once assigned.

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One card, up to four IDs

Each grading company — PSA, Beckett, SGC, CGC — catalogs cards independently, so GemRate mints a separate ID per grader. A single real-world card therefore has up to four GemRate ID values, one for each grader’s entry. Each ID means “this card, graded by this grader.”

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The universal ID

When GemRate recognizes that several per-grader entries are the same card, it matches them together and promotes one of those IDs to be the universal GemRate ID — the single identifier that represents the card across every grader. A grader-scoped response carries both:
  • gemrate_id — the grader-scoped ID for the entry you looked up.
  • universal_gemrate_id — the promoted, cross-grader ID for the same card.
The universal ID is itself one of the card’s per-grader IDs (the promoted one). So for the promoted grader gemrate_id and universal_gemrate_id are identical, while the other graders’ gemrate_ids differ from it.

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When to use the universal or grader-specific

Whenever possible, you should use the universal gemrate ID. The universal ID will not change for a card definition and it can be used to fetch data for any grader. If the universal gemrate ID is not returned by a response, that is because we have not matched that card across graders. That gemrate ID is still functional in any endpoint, and if/when the card is matched that ID will still work.

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Where does a GemRate ID come from?

You obtain a gemrate_id by looking a card up. Depending on what you already know, there are a few ways in:
  • Cert lookup — GET /v1/certs/{grader}/{cert}. If you have a grading company’s cert number, this returns that copy’s gemrate_id (and the universal_gemrate_id alongside it). The most direct route when you’re holding a slab.
  • Catalog downloads — GET /v1/catalogs/{catalog}. Bulk CSV exports list every card in a catalog with its gemrate_id per row — use these to map IDs in bulk rather than one lookup at a time. Availability is limited — see the catalog download endpoint for the catalogs you can currently request (psa and pokemon), each gated by its own approved-key allowlist.
  • The web app — search on gemrate.com and open a card; the gemrate_id is the hex segment in the URL, right after /card/. For example, in https://www.gemrate.com/card/d74f909463a77b5d16a878900d60e2f93710a17f/2025-cooper-flagg-topps-chrome-refractor-251 the ID is d74f909463a77b5d16a878900d60e2f93710a17f (the trailing slug is just a human-readable label and isn’t part of the ID).
  • Spec lookup — GET /v1/specs/{grader}/{spec_id}. If you have a grading company’s own catalog identifier (PSA spec number, Beckett price-item id, etc.), this resolves it to the card and returns its gemrate_id.

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Example

A 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan #57 graded by all four companies: After matching, all four entries report universal_gemrate_id = abc123…, while each keeps its own grader-scoped gemrate_id.