Grading Trimmed Cards

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Posted By: petecld 

Sadly the company that graded this card isn't my company of choice but I feel this should be a policy for all the grading companies and should be afforded to all submitters for every type of card.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2774243603

You still pay for the opinion, so why not get the holder as well?

CGC will holder and disclose trimming/alterations of comic books and it has only enhanced the prices of unaltered comic books. I think the time has come to do this with trading cards.

Or would the amount of altered material out there, now properly labeled as such, scare old collectors and scare away new collectors?

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Posted By: Mrc32

I could not agree more!

I agree that encasing cards that are trimmed and labeling them that way would help prevent the crap shoot that ebay has become for raw cards.

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Posted By: Hankron

I am not against the entombment of cards correctly identified as trimmed or otherwise altered-- and, if Doug Allen's thoughts on scarcity are correct, it is likely that there will more such grading in the future.

I do, however, wish to point out a practical point concerning authentication (for the sake of argument, this post will assume that identifying trimming and alterations is a part of authentication). This particularly relates to a common collector's misconception concerning cards rejected/returned by professional graders.

In common practice, authentication means that the expert (whether it's Jimmy Spence looking at autographs or a reputable card grader) picks out, from a larger group of items, the items that they are willing and very confident to place a label or letter saying "This is such-and-such." The rest of the items are not given such a label or letter because, either they are obviously not authentic or are in a grey area where a confident identication can't be given. Whether it's by a big auction house or a top grader, many items are rejected not because they are identified as fake but because they are not willing to attest to put their name and reputation in writing saying it's authentic ... I beleive it was Jimmy Spence who said that, when looking at autographs for authentication, he has three piles that the autographs go into after inspection: 1) Athuentic pile, 2) Forgery or fake pile and 3) Iffy pile (can't say it's a forgery, but won't say that it's authentic). Piles #2 and #3 don't get LOA's.

I point this out to show that, even though a card was rejected due to 'evidence of trimming' does not mean that a grader will neccesarilly be willing to give to entomb it with a 'trimmed' label.