Those darn cards, consistently O/C, what's yours ?

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Across the BB card spectrum, there are certain cards that are consistently found O/C....and, will
never get a high grade.

Show or Tell us of your experiences with consistently O/C cards ?


I'll start this thread with one of my best pre-war examples that I cannot find centered........

The T206 Green Cobb with a Piedmont 150 back.....which is mostly found O/C with a very narrow
top border. Green Cobbs with other backs (Piedmont 350, Sweet Caps, Sovereign 150, and HINDU
are usually centered).

Here are my two Cobbs to illustrate this.....




TED Z

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Posted By: cmoking

The 1933 Goudey #207 Mel Ott is often oc left/right. But not to the degree of the Piedmont 150 green Cobb, once in a while a nicely centered one shows up.



Here's a nicely centered one that I was thrilled to find.

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Posted By: Eric Brehm

I have never seen well-centered examples of either of these 1933 Goudey cards of Heinie Manush, at least in the NM-MT range:

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Posted By: G. Maines

It is just the borders which are off center, the images are fine.
For cards which will no longer circulate, borders are not necessary.
Hack 'em off.

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Posted By: cmoking

Eric, good point on the 187, tough to find one well-centered. I think this one is nicely centered for a 187, but it still has issues

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

Great thread, Ted.

The set I'm most familiar with, 1938 Goudey, has one of these. It's the high number Joe Vosmik, #271 in the set. It is positioned in the extreme top left corner of the sheet, and is almost always found off center, with a pronounced left to right tilt. I've never actually seen an uncut sheet of nigh number '38 Goudeys, so I'm assuming that the sheet is laid out the same way as the low number sheet, depicted here:



Vosmik is at the top left.

Some examples of the tilt that I've collected:




While '38 Goudeys can have left to right centering issues, and occasionally top to bottom, it's not all that difficult to find examples of every card that are properly centered. Except the Vosmik. This card is really, really tough to find without that tilt.

My current '38 Goudey set is missing a Vosmik. The best-centered example I've ever found was this one, which I owned for a while but traded last year in an unfortunate example of my buying the holder and not the card:



Now that I've eliminated all but the best of my '38s and decided to collect the nicest examples of the cards that I can find, I expect that I will have the hardest time finding a perfectly-centered Vosmik.

I have a whole page devoted to this card on my website, here: http://www.swingbattaswing.com/page10/page14/page14.html

-Al

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Posted By: cmoking

Al, great example! In order to find a non-tilt one, it looks like you need to find a card that had a mistake when going through the printer and tilted just wrong slightly to get the tilt out. So the natural question for me then is: is one that is not tilted then really the tilted one if the card should be tilted?

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

King, I think you're right. Getting a well-centered copy without the tilt is probably the result of finding one that would have been tilted right-to-left if the card had been pasted up on the sheet properly.

It reminds me of a guy I know who collects a modern Topps set from the 70s. His cards are unbelievably high-grade, with the most rich, deep colors you've ever seen. Every one of them looks like they're still wet with ink from the printing process. I've often wondered if perhaps his cards are actually mistakes, with too heavy a saturation of ink, since they look so much more vivid than they should.

-Al

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Great post about Vosmik, really fit's the intent of this Thread.

And, great website, with an interesting and eclectic collection you have.....thanks for sharing it with us.

I collect uncut sheets. First time I've seen a 1938 Goudey sheet, so tell us more about your Lo# sheet ?

TED Z

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

Hi Ted:

Unfortunately that sheet is not mine. It was auctioned off in Mastro a while back. The '38 ad piece is not mine, either - it was auctioned off in REA a few years ago. As much as I'd love to have every companion piece available from that set, I'm not there yet - I've just got the two wrappers. But I like to catalog as much info as I can from that set, and it's of no use to anybody else if I just keep it all to myself, so I figured I'd put it all up on the web in case someone else might be interested in taking a short-cut in learning a bit about the set.

Edit: And thanks for the nice comments about my site/collection.

-Al

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Posted By: Steve Murray

I agree that the 187 Manush has issues:

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Currently on ebay, Levi Bleam has a #271 Vosmik that appears to be a less noticeable tilted pix.
But, upon closer observation, the card is off-kilter in its PSA 5 plastic.
Anyhow, check it out.

It is not an ongoing auction....it's a BIN listing....lest the "usual suspects" start aiming their flak
at me (or are BIN's not permissible, either ?).

Here's the link......

http://cgi.ebay.com/1938-Goudey-271-Joe-Vosmik-PSA-5-5275_W0QQitemZ200179674642

TED Z

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Posted By: fkw

Dont have one right now to show, but Ive owned about 7-8 of them in the past and seen many more.

Id say about 90+% of all of the Tango Egg Beschers are way off center.

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Posted By: JimB

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Posted By: JimB

Toughest card in the set in mid or high grade.

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Posted By: Anonymous

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

If my memory serves me right, your Green Cobb is a Piedmont 150....correct ?

TED Z

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Posted By: JimB

Ted,
That's right. You were quite astute in figuring out that the t/b centering issue with that card was particular to Piedmont 150s.
JimB

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Posted By: Rich Klein

Includes the 1979 Topps Ozzie Smith RC and the 1984 Donruss Joe Carter RC.

There are plenty of others which tend to always be O/C -- I think the 1969 Topps Lou Brock is another one of those cards almost always found O/C.

Regards
Rich

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

One of the most "infamous" post-WWII O/C's is the 1967 Topps (Hi#) Red Sox team card. I have one somewhere that is atrocious;
if I can find it, I'll post it.

TED Z

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Thanks for the compliment....I discovered this Green Cobb "flaw" a couple of years ago when I commenced working on my all-Piedmont set.
I first observed this O/C factor when I was diligently trying to maintain "150 backs" for all my 153 cards in the 150 Subjects series.

So, I'm not sure how "astute" I was....but, I like that adjective....thanks again.

TED Z

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

Ted:

Thanks for the tip on the Vosmik. Although I've never bought anything from Levi, I had the pleasure of meeting him at a show a while back and found him to be an extremely nice guy, more than willing to sit there and talk to me about '38 Goudeys for a while. I'm pretty big on not bothering dealers at shows when they should be doing business, so I left him alone when his table got busy, but while I was there he gave me his undivided attention and I learned a bit about the set from him. At the time, he had a great inventory of high-grade '38s that were a lot of fun to look at.

Anyway, I looked at the card and although the tilt isn't so bad, the corners are a little soft for what I'm trying to do with that set. Thanks, though - I appreciate the thoughtful gesture.

-Al

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

I'll put a "biggie" into this mix....1933 Goudey Ruth (#181). Most of them I've had, or seen, are
usually O/C horizontally. With some barely having a border on the "thin" side.

Let's see your Green Ruth's ?

TED Z

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Posted By: Eric Brehm

Here's a #181 Ruth that has pretty good centering. In my experience, looking at these cards for about the last year and a half or so, I've actually seen more centering problems with the #53 (yellow) and #149 (red) Ruth cards from the set. It's all relative though; in fact generally speaking 1933 Goudeys seem to me to have less centering problems than many other major baseball card sets. (For example, when I look through listings of T206 cards that I might be interested in, I typically reject about half of them as not being centered well enough for my taste, whereas with 1933 Goudeys it is more like 1 out of 10, at most.) Might be an optical illusion of some sort, due to the width of the borders and so on, but that is how it appears to me.

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Posted By: Mark

I agree with Ted... the very first card I thought of when I saw this thread was the Green Ruth. Mine is cenered 98/2 to the right, so I really look closely at these every time they turn up. It is just startling how many are identical to mine (or even 100/0 to the right).

Eric... your amazing example made me think twice before posting directly below, but I honestly think 3/4 of these Green Ruths are centered drastically to the right.

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Posted By: Joey Settle

Here's a scan of my P150 back Cobb Green. Topp to bottom centering is a little better but that pesky layer of varnish on mine is a little annoying sometimes.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

ERIC....nicest Green Ruth I've seen....thanks for posting.

MARK....You 3/4 figure is quite close. I scanned 11 - Green Ruth's that have sold, or currently selling, on ebay, here they are:

O/C to the Right....4 cards

O/C to the Left.....4 cards

Centered....3 cards

TED Z

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Posted By: Eric Brehm

I looked at my collection of Ruth #181 scans, and you guys are right, a lot of them are off center, particularly left to right.

What causes cards to be off-center, anyhow? I presume that the sheets are cut by some giant paper-cutter type device, and unequal card borders occur when the cutting process is mis-aligned, so that the cuts between the cards are not made exactly down the middle of the border areas between card images. If this is the case, you would also expect some cards to be larger or smaller than they are nominally intended to be, particularly at the edges of the sheets (i.e. if all the cuts are lined up exactly parallel, but are not properly in synch with the border areas throughout the sheet).

I guess another way cards could be off-center is if the border areas between cards in the sheet themselves are not equal in size -- then even a perfectly aligned cutting process would result in off-center cards.

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Posted By: JimB

Eric,
Great Ruth!
JimB

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Posted By: Eric Brehm

Thanks JimB, I got that one from Levi Bleam. I had to pay him over book value for it, but some say it's a borderline '9'. In any case it is definitely the nicest Goudey Ruth card I've been able to get my hands on.

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Posted By: Mark Steinberg

Eric... I believe I know what you are saying, and don't quite understand it either...

Let's assume the "cutter" is a bit off, to the right side (and is causing the cards to be cut off-center horizontally). Then you would have to assume that the cards on the extreme left side of the sheet would be cut wider, and the cards along the right side would be cut short.

This would not affect the overall size of the cards in the middle of the sheet, but would have to impact the dimensions of the cards on either extreme side.

Hard to put this concept in words, but does this make sense to anyone?

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Posted By: Eric Brehm

Mark, yes you describe well what I was thinking. If the whole sheet is cut off-center, you would get off-center cards in the middle of the sheet, as well as larger and smaller cards on the sides. But it is true that cards do vary somewhat in size, even up through 1970's Topps I understand. So perhaps the defect in the sheet cutting process that causes off-center cards is also what produces such size variations.

My other idea was that the spaces between cards on the sheet itself might vary in size. Then even a perfectly aligned cutting process would produce off-center borders on individual cards.

I'm not sure which of these two scenarios, if any, explains why cards tend to vary so much in border equality.

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Posted By: Mark Steinberg

Maybe both scenarios come into play... or different scenarios for different issues, thoughout the years.

It is a very interesting question you raise... If anyone out there has further knowledge or insights, please share!

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

The Green Ruth (#181) was situated approx. in the middle of Goudey's 24-card 7th sheet....directly above Manush (#187).
There are several scans of this Manush shown in this thread. Steve Murray's scan shows an O/C Manush, which is comp-
arable to a typical O/C Green Ruth. And, I would expect Al Thomas (#169) and Dan Howley (#175), that are in the same
column above Ruth and Manush, to be similarly O/C.

TED Z

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Posted By: Eric Brehm

It would make sense that cards in the same column would have similar centering problems, whether caused by bad cutting or by bad placement on the sheet to begin with (which is it? is the open question). Here are examples of #169 Thomas and #175 Howley which aren't too bad (Thomas looks to be centered a bit to the right, and Howley just has thin borders):