OK, maybe an exaggeration, but here are two current posts on the Baseball side. What really sucks is that if you have the good stuff - the true high grade stuff - your cards and their values will be diluted.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=115212

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=115203

This is in addition to the poster here who showed how a vice can help improve cards.

Eric!!!

Thanks for linking to that bbcard thread with the high magnification before/after photos -- fantastic images which make clear, beyond all doubt, what is going on. One would hope this is a rarely-occurring thing; but considering the potential $$$ involved, there's certainly more than a little incentive to spur this type of activity.

One of the weaknesses in third party grading is that the graders can't possibly know our favorite sets the way we do. As Ralph was pointing out in the Dick Tracy thread, when you have handled certain cards in great quantity and over many years, you develop a radar for a card that is just ever so slightly off. I don't know how the grading companies work, but I assume that the graders work with a wide variety of submissions (i.e. there isn't a grader who just does 30's nonsports). So, although card alteration and shaving corners has probably been going on for many years, it doesn't surprise me that many of these cards would find themselves in a graded slab.

i dont think eric is far off base with this.(pardon the baseball pun). when i dealt in just baseball cards in the 80's and most of the 90's the high grade stuff you see around now was not around then, not even 10 years ago. i think you have to attribute this do to card doctoring evolving to almost un-detectible ways you see now. lots of the tobacco and caramel stuff you see in auctions now makes you wonder. a real shame, and it will if not already happen to nonsports cards.

Some thoughts....

I have a friend who collects vintage movie posters. Many of these go for mega bucks. In the Movie poster world if you have the poster linen backed and repaired it is worth MORE money then not. They don't try to hide it - but state it and get more money for them when this is done to them.

I have another friend who buys original advertising oil paintings. Again, he has them professionally restored and they are worth more money. Nothing hidden and it is completely accepted.

Also, ALL cards - no matter what they are - start out as an uncut sheet and have to be cut down. The manufacturers really didn't care that much if the cards were all the exact same size or not. I have heard stories concerning the Shelby Gum company that the cutting machine would break and they would hand out scissors to the girls on the line who would hand cut the cards and put them in the packs (I believe this as I have several of the Fighting Planes cards that are like this). Does this mean they are trimmed if they came from the factory that way?

Anyway, just a few thoughts....

While I have no doubt that many cards are being altered (one of the reasons we avoid graded cards unless they are cheaper than ungraded); I would guess that much of the really high grade stuff available today that wasn't 20 years ago is due to attrition. People die!

Many of the oldtimers (unfortunately, that description probably includes me) have ungraded cards only. When these older collectors pass on, often their estates are sold, and material that has not been seen (by other than friends) in 40~50 years hits the market.

I personally know of several non-sport sets (car sets) which would easily top those shown as number 1 on the registry, but registry is not an important criteria for these collectors. When they are gone, their material will probably go up for sale. An example, one Topps Wheels set was assembled by opening packs! I would assume (possibly erroneously) that those who collect other genre may have the same idea concerning registry.

What defense do we have for altered cards? There are some decent digital microscopes which will do 25~250 magnification blowups (and attach to your computer) that will show virtually any alteration. I bought one off of ebay about 3 weeks ago for about $40. Really does a nice job.

My opinion, others will differ.

Jon.

And to add to Todd's post, I don't know about other Fleer products, but the US printed Official Drag Champs, Drag Nationals, and Race USA sets from the early 1970's are cut so badly that I have had to trim some so they will actually fit in a 9-pocket page! Obviously, if some are that large, others will be too small.

Again, my opinion only.

Jon.

the last line is really telling. the cards were all trimmed from sheets. we all know this to be true, but we find it outrageous when someone retrims the card to make it better. art, rugs, posters, cards, houses, all can be fixed up and sell for more than the current shape they may have been in before. baseball cards (non sports) is a funny animal. there is a famous quote at the beginning of "The Color Purple" "the more things change, the more they stay the same" (perhaps that quote is from another place as well) so here we are 30 years removed from the 1980's when cards started to boom, dealers were trimming, over grading, and pressing out creases back in the day. 15 years ago PSA was born, SGC a little later, to help correct these issue (thank God PSA proved to the collecting world by catching that nice Wagner card ..wink wink) and allow collectors to buy unaltered cards. well today, like counterfeit money, the trimming has improved and the same thing still goes on. The Registry is the culprit, buy the holder (feel safe) not the card.

Just some of the Fleer cards that I found when I opened several wax boxes to make my sets:




I would suggest these are not centered 50/50.

Jon.

Jon - would be interesting to hear more about your microscope! Can you give us a link or a picture and more info about what you are able to see with that?

Todd - your story about the girls with the scissors is a knee-slapper! Must be the story behind those Sea Raider high cards, hand cut from a sheet, that I once grabbed; cutters broke down that day at World Wide Gum . . . or not . . . But in all seriousness, we often hear that manufacturing tolerances might not have been as strict back in the 1930s. But I'm not sure I'm convinced: seems 99+% of all cards in any given series will "square up" when you put them into a deck, know what I mean? The whole story about olden time cutting process variations may well be an old wives' tale.

Lastly, yes, odd things are starting to happen in non-sports, also. Right now on eBay there are a few auction lots with groups of 1930s R73 Indian Gum cards in high grade from SGC. I believe that some of these cards -- not all -- certainly APPEAR to have been trimmed: incredibly professionally and minutely, 'micro-trimmed' if your prefer. Very straight edges, great corners, but the borders are just a shade too narrow. This especially appears the case on some cards, where one can see there is too little of a sliver of white border on BOTH horizontal sides, or both vertical sides, of the card. It is just overdone enough on some of the cards, in my view, to make it visually stick out to someone who has been looking at thousands of R73s down thru the years. I advised the seller (normally a great guy and, in my view, is perhaps caught with these cards, not the instigator of a trim-and-grade scam). We have gone back and forth on emails and he politely disagrees with me, based upon where he obtained the cards. I've taken it as far as I can since, as without the cards in hand and a micrometer to do some measurements, I cannot take this any further. So far, people are not bidding on them, by the way. Only telling this story as a precautionary tale . . .

Ralph, I worked for and with several manufacturers over the years who cut their own paper and cardboard products. Here are some reasons some cards might have been cut less perfectly than others.

1. With each cut, the blade dulls a little. A blade might cut adequately well for 100,000 or maybe even 200,000 cuts. But even after 10,000 cutes, there might be a slight variance. There is also that unexplainable "metal fatigue" factor.

2. Sometimes the sheets aren't exactly the same size. So if the sheet is an sixteenth of an inch larger on the right side, the columns of cards will all be a sixteenth of inch bigger on the right side and a sixteenth of an inch smaller on the left side than other cuts.

3. The sheets used in two different printings, or even in the same printing, might not have been exactly the same size. Additionally, sheets can expand or contract. Sheets might sit around for hours, days, or weeks after being printed before being cut. If the sheet was distorted slightly, this would distort the cut lines as well. If sheets were printed on different presses, they might also be slightly different sizes. Today's web presses reduce or eliminate some of these differences as unlike sheet fed presses the paper is fed into the printer and cut from one continuous roll.

4. The number of sheets placed in the bin to be cut at one time can also be a factor. The blade will cut the top sheets perfectly, but by the time it gets to the bottom sheets, the sheets will have moved slightly in the bin. If the bin has not been set correctly and is too tight or too loose, this difference will be magnified.

5. Finally, there is human error. You simply don't get a second chance, as once that sheet is cut, it's a done deal.

Alan

Thanks for that, Alan.   I suspect most of our more experienced collectors will be familiar with a lot of those older printing/cutting processes which you outlined, and how they might be the source of product output within wider tolerances than achieved nowadays . . . but it was good to see it clearly summarized.  Only a couple things to add. 

I'd suspect (and only my opinion, pls!) that these past sources of dimension inconsistency versus product specs still probably only resulted in size variations within a fairly narrow tolerance . . . say,  +/(-) several hundredths or thousandths of an inch.  Nothing like 1/8th or 1/16th of an inch variation along the horizontal or vertical dimensions, an inconsistency which is clearly visible to the naked eye of an experienced collector.

I believe that when you see such big differences, it is more likely due to human intervention, not production processes.  Hence my previous comment about "squaring up old cards in a deck" and observing that, essentially, cards from the same set all usually tend to line up (not perfectly, but almost . . .) .  Folks may want to try this as an experiment with your raw cards.

Also, going back to your helpful summary, that issue about the card image shifting toward one side or the other (leading to a wide border on one side and a narrower one, on the other).  Bearing that in mind, the key is that regardless of which way the card image shifts, the total border on either dimension still adds up to 100% of the designed width.  Thinking of it in terms of off-centeredness, the result may be 50/50, 60/40, 80/20, 90/10 . . . etc.

But those Indian Gum cards currently up on eBay that I mentioned have narrow white borders on BOTH sides (either on sides, or top and bottom).  Appears, compared to the dimensions I know are right (the total amount of white border that should be there) they appear more like 45/45 or 40/50, etc.  A little bit of border is gone, resulting in gorgeous card, but  . . . Whenever you see this -- and it isn't hard to spot -- I think you KNOW there is a trim job.

Ralph: It's easy to square up all your cards when they are slabbed!

Chuck

Funny Chuck. I actually think the slabs highlight the differences rather than hide them.

Ralph, I totally agree that when cards are smaller than standard size and have equal borders, chances are they were trimmed. I also agree that when you square up a bunch of cards that the tolerances are amazingly small most of the time. Maybe the craftmanship of years ago made up for the lack of technology.

It is possible to get smaller cards with equal borders though. The sheets are put into the bin and slid into the cutter. The blade cuts the right side of the sheet. The bin is pulled out, rotated ninety degrees, slid back, in and the blade makes the second cut to what was the top side of the card. Repeat for the third and fourth sides of the sheet. Now the cut sheet has to be cut into columns or rows, or diecut into individual cards. Say the space around the outside of the sheet is 1/8 of inch. This would mean the space between the inside rows and columns should be 1/4 of an inch. That way, if the cuts between the rows and columns are centered, all the borders will be 1/8 of an inch. Of course, the likelyhood is that there will be some variance. But say the space around the outside of the sheet is actually 1/16 of an inch. If the center cuts are centered, the borders will be different, one being 1/16 and one being 1/8. But if the center cuts are off, it could actually result in both borders being 1/16. My point being that there are a lot of variables. Hope no one's head is spinning.

I was always amazed how many sheets were thrown away at the start of a big print run. The pressmen would sometimes throw away dozens, if not hundreds, of sheets before they were happy with the colors and registration. They probably also threw some sheets away because of centering. But once the run began, they weren't checking the sheets for centering, so it's likely some misprinted sheets got through. There probably was some sort of quality control during the cutting procedure, but I doubt many miscut sheets and cards were caught.

This is pure speculation, but I wonder if miscut cards are less likely to survive over time? Imagine someone back in the 30s who has hundreds of Indian Gum cards. He finds a few that are miscut or misshaped and decides he doesn't need to keep them since he has so many "perfect" cards. I wouldn't ever throw away a Dare Devils card now of course, but I've thrown away or ripped up miscut cards from common sets.

I scanned some examples of miscut cards below from three different decades. Bring 'Em Back Alive is a set that has a huge proportion of miscut cards. Some of the cards are smaller or larger than the standard size and some are more exotically miscut. The card on the right has a slightly inward curving top border and a sort of arrow-shaped top right corner. The card on the left has a slightly outward curving top border. The card in the middle is obviously smaller than the other two cards but I do not think it's trimmed. It has gum stains and printer marks on the front so I just can't see any reason anyone would trim it.

Alan

Alan, interesting pix!

I don't know if it is just an optical illusion, but that BEBA card on right side actually looks very suspiciously like it was hand-cut, an exacto knife job, not coming out of the plant looking like that. My reason to feel this way is because the top edge appears a rather concave, as you pointed out, a valley sagging downward across the top edge with a peaking righthand corner. But the bottom edge appears to balloon out and down a bit, toward the middle. I strongly suspect a hand-cut on that card because while it is certainly possible (due to all the variables you stated in the earlier post) for a factory-cut card's dimensions to vary slightly, the same factory machine-cut cards almost without fail will have STRAIGHT, parallel borders. Any time we see border waviness (non-straight edges), something is probably afoot.

You could be right Ralph. I've probably seen more than a hundred BEBA cards with similar cuts, so maybe tons of them were hand-cut. It certainly is hard to figure out how a machine could make the curved cuts, especially when one border is curved inward and the opposite corner is curved outward. And it's even harder to explain the arrowhead corners! Todd, you ever hear anything about Topps having people hand-cut their cards?

Alan

If you have seen a lot of cards with the same curvature (inward, outward) IMHO it is machine cut (probably a bent cutter blade) by definition a hand cut abnormality would not be reproduced hundreds of time.

Claude, it's not exactly the same cut. It's all sort of variations of curved edges and weirdly pointed corners. Plus, I don't think a blade could be curved that much in such a short span/distance. The blades I've seen are huge and heavy duty. They certainly dull, but it's hard to envision them bending. Maybe blades in the early 50s were different from the blades I've seen though.

Alan

The curved edges could be created by a die that is not perfectly produced. Dies were made by hand. Not sure if they still are though.

Alan

I personally pulled the card on the left in its present condition from a sealed pack. It has not been trimmed. I don't know from where I acquired the card on the right (but it probably hasn't been trimmed either ).

Jon

One thought that may (or may not) be interesting. In stamp collecting, stamps with oversize margins (such as the one on the right in my post above) are called "jumbo" and command a SIGNIFICANT premium in price (sometimes several times the normal price).

No opinion, no recommendation, simply a fact for consideration.

Jon.

on the BB side described as JUMBO margins in the past. Most card collectors have an issue if the measurements don't fall within such a narrow range. Going backwards from now, the width of that range has to be wider and wider back to the Old Judge card days. If you've collected the Old Judge N172 baseball issue, you'll understand the nuances of the cutting process. Tall, short, angle cut, wide, narrow, miscut, photo variances, etc. I'm sure Jay Miller could post some oddities from that series that he feels are all over the board yet 'factory' cut and not tampered with.

I think this thread has diverged into two different topics. We all know there are lots of crazy factory miscuts and other oddities out there. However, these micro-shaved corners and edges that raise a card from EX to NM are a lot more insidious than that.