Skip to content
The Under Glass

Editorial standards

The rules every guide on The Under Glass is held to, whether or not it carries a buy link.

Independence

We earn commissions from some links, and commissions never change what we recommend. We only place a buy link when we have an active affiliate relationship for that product, and many articles carry no buy links at all. If the right answer for a card is “don’t grade it” or “the cheaper holder is fine”, that is the answer we give.

No paid placements

No company can pay to be included, ranked or recommended in our guides. Every affiliate program we are currently part of is listed on our affiliate disclosure page.

Sourced or silent

  • Every figure in an article carries a named, dated source, listed at the end of the article. If we cannot source a figure, we leave it out.
  • We do not claim hands-on testing unless an article says exactly what was handled and how.
  • We do not predict card prices or promise investment returns.

How sources are gathered and how comparisons are built is described on our methodology page.

How software is used

Drafts are produced with software assistance. Before a guide is published, its figures and claims are checked against the sources it cites, and anything that cannot be matched to a source is removed. We do not present our guides as the work of an expert panel.

Corrections

If you think something on the site is wrong, email support@merchant-dash.com with the page address and what you found. We check the claim against its source; when we got it wrong, we fix the article and note the correction and its date on the page.

Last updated: September 2026