Grading Is Not Just Certification. It's Marketing.
by The Games Market RedazioneApril 30, 2026
Between Montechiari and Como Fun, NeoPlay has doubled its turnover.
Si parla of grading as a technical act. A case, an evaluation, a score, a sealed slab. It is described as a certification operation and therefore, by extension, as an operation that concerns the individual piece.
The grading protects, measures, certifies: everything the object was before. It is a convenient reading and it is wrong.
The grading, when it really enters a booth at a trade fair, does not act on the piece. It acts on what is around the piece. It acts on the seller, on the public, on the distance between the two. It acts on the dealer’s perception, on the time a visitor spends standing in front of a display case, on the likelihood that that display case will be remembered in the evening, at dinner, after the fair.
It affects turnover, but only as a side effect of something more interesting: it affects attention.
È for this reason that grading, in trade show marketing, is not a technical service. It is a strategic lever. And like all real levers, it is not measured by the weight it moves, but by the multiplier it produces on the rest of the system.
The NeoPlay case at Como Fun, just a few days after its participation in Montechiari, is the clearest way to show it: same stand, same company, same setup, same basic material, same pricing line.
The grading does not act on the piece. It acts on what is around the piece.
Montechiari, the baseline
NeoPlay arrives in Montechiari as a new company, one that is making its way in the market. A corner stand of five meters by three cthere is the counter, there is the material, there is the owner’s availability.
It competes with other similar stands, each with the same exhibition grammar, each speaking to the visitor through a single question: how much does it cost.
Like Fun, the variation
A few days later, NeoPlay exhibited at Como Fun.
One of the main differences is an additional investment of € 2,500: € 500 for TGMGrading grading on selected pieces from your own archive, € 2,000 for graded material purchased specifically.
In terms of the stand, little changes. A few TGMGrading slabs positioned in the most visible spots.
Non there is no redesign, there is no new signage, there is no preparatory communication campaign. There is only the physical introduction of grading within the same environment as before.
In terms of results, everything changes.
In the first three hours of the trade fair, 200 people stop by the stand. They don’t just pass by, they don’t glance casually: they stop.
Rimain. The conversion to purchase is 15%: thirty people who buy.
The average dwell time measured, because this time there is something to measure, is 7 minutes per visitor.
In a trade fair where the average time spent in front of a stand ranges from twenty seconds to one minute, seven minutes are an eternity.
![[The three hours that changed everything. Direct reports from the NeoPlay booth, first session of Como Fun.]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.thegamesmarket.com%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Ffile%2Fproxy%3Fkey%3Dstaging%252Fmagazine%252Fcontent%252Fil-grading-non--solo-una-certificazione--marketing-img-0.png&w=3840&q=75)
The total revenue for the two days is € 8,000. Exactly double Montechiari.
![[The doubling of turnover between the two fairs. Same stand, same company, same prices; only one variable.]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.thegamesmarket.com%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Ffile%2Fproxy%3Fkey%3Dstaging%252Fmagazine%252Fcontent%252Fil-grading-non--solo-una-certificazione--marketing-img-1.png&w=3840&q=75)
The revenue multiplier, on its own, tells part of the story.
It is the figure that stands out first, and it is the easiest to communicate: grading invested, revenue doubled, ROI of +160%. It is a simple, demonstrable, replicable calculation.
![[The economics of grading: €2,500 invested, €4,000 net increase, ROI +160% in two days of trade fair.]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.thegamesmarket.com%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Ffile%2Fproxy%3Fkey%3Dstaging%252Fmagazine%252Fcontent%252Fil-grading-non--solo-una-certificazione--marketing-img-2.png&w=3840&q=75)
But the revenue multiplier is the last effect in the chain, not the first. And to understand why it works, you have to look at what happened before.
Before the turnover there was the stay
— seven minutes in front of a shop window. Before the stay there was attention
— two hundred people who stopped in three hours. Before the attention came curiosity
— the feeling, for those who passed by, that in that booth there was something that deserved to be understood. And before curiosity there was a shift in perception: that booth, which in Montechiari was indistinguishable from twenty others, at Como Fun it was no longer.
The grading, in other words, first and foremost operated on the mental category in which the stand was placed by the visitor.
A Montechiari: price as the only driver.
A Como Fun: a shop that works with grading, so a shop that knows the market, a shop that deserves at least a closer look from passersby.
A closer look becomes a stop. A stop becomes a conversation. A conversation becomes a purchase. And sometimes — and this is the detail that the numbers do not tell — it becomes a customer who comes back the second day, who sends a friend, who asks for information about a piece that was not even for sale. Revenue doubles.
What really doubled was not the product. It was the context in which the product was being sold.
The five multipliers
![[The five grading multipliers. Revenue is only the first effect; below is the chain that produces it.]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.thegamesmarket.com%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Ffile%2Fproxy%3Fkey%3Dstaging%252Fmagazine%252Fcontent%252Fil-grading-non--solo-una-certificazione--marketing-img-3.png&w=3840&q=75)
The NeoPlay case clearly shows that grading at the trade show does not work along a single axis.
Work simultaneously on five. And only one of the five is normally tracked by the merchant, namely... turnover.
The other four are the invisible multipliers, the ones that explain why the first one moves.
1) The first is the revenue multiplier. The measurable effect, the figure that shows up in the cash register. In the NeoPlay case, it is a factor of 2. It is the most obvious and also the least interesting, because it is only the final output.
2) The second is the attention multiplier. The same stand, at the same fair, with the same materials, goes from little-known to attractive. The number of people passing by does not change: the number of people who stop does. Grading acts as a signal of recognition — it tells the visitor that inside there is a level of expertise and selection that is not found elsewhere.
3) The third is the trust multiplier. The same dealer, with graded TGMG titles in the window, attracts attention. Not because grading guarantees the seller — but because it communicates that the seller has invested in a validation process, and those who invest in validation are unlikely to be poorly structured.
4) The fourth is the time multiplier. 7 minutes of average stay is a figure that, in the language of trade-show conversion, amounts to a radical restructuring of the relationship between visitor and seller. More time means more conversation, more conversation means more information shared, more information means more chances of purchase. Time, at a trade show, is money: the more of the visitor’s time you have, the higher the average ticket will be.
5) The fifth is the conversion multiplier. A curious audience is not necessarily a buying audience. But a curious audience that spends seven minutes at the booth, that talks with the owner, that handles a slab firsthand, that understands why that piece has that value—that audience moves significantly closer to the purchasing threshold.
The 15% conversion rate on 200 people stopped is not an abstract number: it is the direct result of the four previous multipliers that lined up in sequence. Looked at together, the five multipliers tell the same story: grading, inside a booth, is not a product update. It is a realignment of the context. And the context, at a trade fair, is the real product.
People do not stop to buy
There is a phrase that NeoPlay could take away from Como Fun, and that is the most useful to pass along to any other retailer reading this article: people do not stop to buy. They stop to understand.
Grading creates curiosity. Curiosity creates traffic. Traffic creates sales. But the crucial point is the direction of the connection: you do not sell first, you arouse curiosity first.
Chi tries to start from sales skips the initial step and gets — literally — half of the possible revenue. Here, however, there is the final tightening. The NeoPlay case works because NeoPlay was not alone: inside the booth it had an asset, TGMGrading grading, which is the result of a process, an infrastructure, a network.
Un shopkeeper who tries to replicate the effect with improvised grading, without a network, without standards, without brand recognizability, gets the shell without the content.
Grading is the lever. But the lever works only if it has a fulcrum. The fulcrum, for the shopkeeper, is the network. Those who remain outside the network hold the lever in their hand, but do not know where to place it.
Cover photo credits opening article Comofun
Authorized for publication by NeoPlay S.r.l.
Authorized for publication by NeoPlay S.r.l.
The Games Market Redazione
The Games Market is an international platform dedicated to contemporary video games and retro games. It offers market data, technological tools, and services such as TGM grading to help people assess and buy video games with confidence.
The Games Market Redazione
The Games Market is an international platform dedicated to contemporary video games and retro games. It offers market data, technological tools, and services such as TGM grading to help people assess and buy video games with confidence.