With all the talk of altered cards....

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Posted By: Dave

I wanted to see if anybody here could tell me what's wrong with this Hall card. I submitted it to PSA and it came back evidence of altering. I know may be hard to tell from just a scan, not sure. The graded pic on the right is a scan from one of Wabbitwax's cards.

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

looks a little suspicious. The corners at the bottom round differently than the ones at the top. JMO........

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Posted By: Dave

Just kinda goes to say IMO, some of these jobs I guess are pretty good, at least to somebody like me. I bought the card raw off ebay and didn't think twice about the chances of it having been altered.

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Posted By: Pcelli60

One mans altering is another mans restoration..I worked with fine art restorers for 10 years.These people are responsible for the restoring of multi-million dollar art objects, furniture and just about anything on paper or canvas that can be restored/saved.All this without any negative impact on its value, if anything its value is increased..
So if a T206 or any pre-war card is subjected to a restorative proceedure, I personally would not treat it as damaged goods..
Pcelli60

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Posted By: Dave

ahhh....hence why we live where we do...i did see this as damaged goods. if a t206 won't grade, I don't want it. and promptly got rid of the card on ebay for $20.

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Posted By: Pcelli60

I understand my brother in collecting..We gotta live by the house rules..And believe me I have learned several hard lessons from the powers that be..
Have a good one..Pcelli60

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Posted By: anthony

it looks like eye shadow and razor burn have been added...looks pretty good, glad i dont buy raw anymore...unless i know the dealer/seller

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Posted By: Joe D.

the two cards are about the same width.... but the one on the left is a lot shorter.

if they are both authentic (no reprints), I would guess that one of them is trimmed.

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Posted By: Dave

It does look weird with my crop paste job. Don't know why it looks so different. The raw card was actually 1/32 of an inch short from my own measurements I took. I still sent it in since the edges didn't exactly look sharp....and with the results coming back as altered, would PSA not have put on there trimmed as well?

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Posted By: T206Collector

...sold it, so you can't resubmit to PSA for another try; or, better yet, give the people at SGC a look. If you really like the card, and can't find the alteration, those are better avenues before dumping it back on ebay.

While I'm sure you won't always go wrong, it is a mistake to buy a raw T206 card on ebay that is advertised as anything higher than VG condition. Since it only costs $10 to have such a card graded to improve its value exponentially, there is a lot of ungradeable raw crap floating around. I would save my mid-to-high grade raw purchases for the B/S/T thread or a dealer you know deals in raw gradeable material.

In any event, I would guess the bottom edge was trimmed, but it is a nice job. The best way to tell would be to hold the card perpendicular to you, so that you are looking at the edges only, compare all four edges for even wear and color, and also look at how the paper on both sides should be slightly beviled as it meets the edge -- a trimmed card is squared off where the paper meets the edge.

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Posted By: Joe D.

Taking it to photoshop (I did it quickly)

I scaled the one on the left so that the interior image frame was the same size as the image on the right (scaled to match image size not card size)

The end result...
the card on the left was short top to bottom, and the card on the right was narrow left to right.

So, we have a difficult comparison to start.


I will say that even with computerized cutting machines today, paper cutting has certain tolerances - and there is the human error factor / so within reason - with today's best technology - cutting is not going to be precise.

I could only imagine that the tollerance was greater 100 years ago and the margin of error was wider....

so I am not so certain that size alone can determine if trimming or altering occurred.

jmho.

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Posted By: T206Collector

Er... uh... yeah...

Anyway, size alone is not determinative of whether trimming or altering occurred.

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Posted By: Dave

Actually looking back over my notes, I screwed up. So much for trying to go off memory. The card didn't measure short at all. It measured correctly length wise, width wise it measured larger. Puzzled me at the time because I had no clue if Sweet Caporal backs which is what it was could be larger or not. The card that measured 1/32 short was a Burch fielding (which came back trimmed) at the same time this one came back altered. The only thing I can think is some kind of restoration may have been done to this Hall..perhaps an add on job that would have made the edges wider? I'm not sure. I find it hard to believe anyone would try to restore a card like this that wouldnt great better than most likely a 4. Card sizes always confuse me. I know the American Beauty cards measure a little narrow. But other than that I don't know which backs may often be found to be a bit bigger.