A Problem with Trimming in Another Vintage Area

[drcy]

Something that I've been aware of for a few years is the trimming of news photos. A bad trend in the baseball hobby that I hope is overcome.

Duly note that old photos, especially photos, are not baseball cards and don't have to have razor sharp edges. In fact, photos with razor sharp edges are a good sign, if not a sure sight, they've been trimmed. This is an area where a a little roughness to the edge, a minor dog ear to an edge is a good thing. Other than with ill-informed baseball card collectors there's no financial desirability to a razor sharp perfect cut-- they're 100 year old photos. The baseball collectors desire for 'Gem Mint' news photos is completely misguided and harmful to the photography hobby.

I would hazard to say that if you see a perfectly Gem Mint cut news photos that is 80 or 100 years old, it's likely not only been trimmed but cut down a fair bit in size. 100 year old paper thin photos simply don't come with edges that look as if "they were cut by a papercutter last Tuesday." In other words, desire rough cuts and expected wear. The trimming appears to be done on cards without white bordes. Trimming and cutting down of white bordered photos is usually obvious, as the white borders are of consistent line and size.

Further many of the trim jobs should be obvious due to the imperfect cuts (not linear lines)-- original photo paper was factor cut perfectly rectangular. Sometimes the lines are imperfect enough I wonder if they are using big scissors.

One last thing to keep in mind is that old photo factory photo paper came in standard sizes. Considering a standard size from the factory was 8"x"10," ask yourself why that razor sharp-edged photo happens to measure a little less than 8"x 10." There was no factory 7.7" by 9.8" sized photo paper . . . But if a photo is an unusual size, the expected old age edge wear will calm your mind.

A key value-wise, is most serious photo collectors will be able to tell/know that a news photo has been trimmed, cut down, and will financially value it less. I can tell and it was a Net54 photo collecting friend who pointed out the prevalence of trimmed photos coming from a particular source..

Yes, trimming does alter the photo's desirability, and it is completely unnecessary because photo collectors don't take out a look looking for unseen wrinkled, etc. An ExMt and a Mint news photo should have the same value on the market.

Luckily, PSA does not condition grade photos. Photos should never be professionally condition graded, PSA card style. It just gives incentive for idiot baseball card people to alter photos, when, as I've said, it's completely unnecessary.

One thing I hope this post does is preempt the rush to trim old news photos, by stating that Gem Mint (and irregular cuts) are unnatural, a strong if not nearing sure sign the photo has been trimmed and should dock, not raise the value. Actually, look for and value more photos with a bit of honest wear. And, besides, you're not going to get a better number of a PSA label for Gem Mint edge because PSA doesn't condition grade photos.

And, in case they ever do condition grade photos, I'll tell you right now tha 99.9% of Gem Mint 10 news photos will be altered photos, and learned photo collectors will valuate more a Ex 6 version.

Happily, untrimmed/uncutdown photos are easy to identify, and, unlike baseball cards, trimmed/cutdown photos can't be "cracked out" in order to fool someone else because untrimmed/uncut down photos are easy to identify and most trimmed/cut down photos I've seen are pretty easy to identify, at least as suspect, even in an online auction image.

Trimmed/cut down old photos are nearly as obvious as clean old silver. If you see an antique silver item that is bright and shiny, it's obvlusly been recently cleaned because silver naturally tarnishes.