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Posted By: Plastic Dog

Doug,

I agree with you completely! In all honesty, I look at the edges before I even look at the size. I think the wear on the edges on the back is very telling. I'm not advanced enough to actually loop the type of cut, but I don't think that is really necessary 90% of the time. If something looks VG or VG-EX with appropriate wear, I don't really worry about size (unless obviously a problem). If something is suspiciously clean or straight on the back, I look at size a lot closer. Most of the times those "nice" cards are on the smaller size of tolerance, or just under by 1/16 of an inch. To me, that means that the card was in all likelihood trimmed (from a large or even oversize card). Rarely do these really "nice" cards end up on the larger end of the spectrum. If they were really unaltered, the proportion on the large size would be the same as the smaller ones. But that is not usually the case. I have a feeling technology is good enough now where people can approximate an "older" cut, at least good enough to fool most of the collectors out there.

For example, the Gretzky Wagner was clearly cut from some type of sheet - whether a printer's proof, a salesman sample, or some unissued strip, there just is no logical way to argue otherwise. Especially when the only other Piedmont back was admittedly hand-cut. The difference between the two is that the Gretzky copy was likely "cut" a lot more recently, or at least cut further. The only problem I have with the whole sales process is the PSA grading of the card; if they will grade that without annotation, how are we to be sure that they can tell whether other cards have been similarly improved?