Strip cards - your opinion, please.

[Vintagedeputy]

Lately, I’ve been getting into some strip cards with a small collection that I picked up. Condition varies in this group, so I wanted to ask your opinion.

The people here are not important. I’m more concerned about the condition and how you view these. More to the point, these cards were hand-cut, or hand-torn it seems. I guess no one in the 1920’s owned scissors. Would you try to fix them before submitting for grading and encapsulation? (I’m not asking if you would send these particular cards in for grading, so please let’s not go off on a tangent about wasting money on grading worthless cards). I’m really interested to see how collectors view strip cards.

You’ll see that the Hoppe card on the left is pretty straight with the right dotted line border still partially visible. Would you trim that as best as you could along the line, or leave as-is? What do you think it would grade in either case?

Same thing for the Carter card. It’s pretty rough. Would it grade a 1 or A as is? Would you attempt to cut straighter lines? Would that help it?

The Hoppe on the right isn’t bad, except for that torn upper right corner. Would you try to trim it to make it less noticeable? What grade do you think it gets as-is versus trimming it some?