Crease or paper loss?

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Posted By: quan

I'm interested in hearing how other collectors feel about this. If you gotta live with one, which would you choose? Personally I'd rather have a well placed crease than a piece of the card missing, or scattered wrinkles versus spots of paper loss...

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Posted By: TBob

but I would rather have an EXMT front and a little paper loss on the back than a G+ or VG- card with creases and rounding corners and a complete back. I think the price guides and collector prices in general were 180 degrees opposite to this view for a long time, but lately I have noticed tobacco and caramel (especially) cards with nice fronts and a little back damage really picking up steam and getting higher prices proportionately than lower grade cards with complete backs.
I remember being stunned about 6 or 7 years ago to have the owner of one of the biggest auction houses telling me that corners were more important than wrinkles or creases, because many creases and all wrinkles could be removed but it takes a lot of time, expertise and patience to "build" corners. Is it any wonder that about a year later we started seeing a flood of PSA8's and 9's in vintage cards. Ever wonder if laser cutters and soaking and stretching methods contributed to these cards looking so nice and not having any wrinkles and sharp corners?

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Posted By: quan

In the case you propose, I'd also rather have the EXMT, but generally some VG cards are nice.

Card restorations? I've heard about spooning, but how does one go about "building" a corner? Brian chime in~~~!!!

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

The answer covered paper loss ON THE BACK, ROUNDED CORNERS, and what not.

Answer: On the front of a card, I MUCH prefer creases to paper loss. So do the grading companies. The Connor Old Judge in Smolin's auction, which i won, has a big crease that runs all the way across the card at his knees--which are bent, and his hands are on them. You can hardly see it! Nice card.

Square corners are nice, but INFINITELY less important than the picture! (I'm talking about 19th century stuff. I guess we all expect more or less square corners on 20th century stuff).

Paper loss ON THE BACK is only important if there's something ELSE on the back. Like printing, black (Mayos), a cartoon--Old Judges--well, it's nice to see an Old Judge with a clean back. But to make the fuss about clean backs on backless cards that grading companies do--that's just rediculous!

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Posted By: Lee Behrens

I agree with Julie on the fact that I prefer paper loss (only on the back of cards), but only to issue that have nothing of signifigance on the back, like a bio or stats. I hate T202's with back damage but don't mind them with center creases, whereas T206's I would take back damage over creases, especially on the face.

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Posted By: Anonymous

I would take a card with nice corners, no creases, and a spot of paper loss on the BACK over a VG card with a complete back.

But I'd probably take the VG card over an EX card with paper loss on the FRONT.

And I'm with Julie on her point about the importance of a nice picture

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Posted By: Ben

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Posted By: Dan Mathewson

I have some damm neat cards with some paper loss on the back. They still present well and look terrific. Creases usually show both front and back and look like hell. I steer clear of creased cards unless they are extremely rare cards.