I've purchased and graded a few "Near Mint" cards and none of them came back with a grade of 10
card size in inches, it is 3.25x2.25
Centering should be 65/35 or better on the front and 90/10 on the back, possibly with a very slight diamond cutting (which is a type of cutting error done in the factory)
When mulliganing, the cards to prioritize are the Monkey D
On the other hand, for products like Secret Lair drops, Commander decks, or other preconstructed / box-set supplemental products, we used the cost of buying the sealed product (which is generally lower than the cost of buying all of the cards in the product individually) from around the time the set was released (for sealed product, you'll often pay much more if you wait until the set goes out of print to try to buy it)
It probably comes from the fact that I love to mix the Draft wackiness of Conspiracy with the serious nature of powered Cubing, so they were attractive to me from the start