Trimmed vs. Hand Cut

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Posted By: Chris Counts

Does it matter to collectors if a card that was part of a larger piece was hand-cut shortly after it was issued, or trimmed (with the aid of modern equipment) at a much later date to be more presentable. For instance, I've seen some horribly-cut 1930s Wheaties panels, and I've also seen some perfectly rectangular ones with sharp corners that were clearly altered in recent years. This issue must certainly pertain to 1920s strip cards as well. Is a badly hand cut card worth more than one that's trimmed down and looks much nicer?

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Posted By: leon

I think it's probably personal taste. For me I want the biggest borders possible and would take those over a freshly trimmed card.....I also can't stand numeric grades on strip cards or hand cut cards but that is for another thread, I guess (though this is sort of about that topic).....The bigger the border the better...and that really goes for regular cards too..Good question...

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Posted By: Anthony S.

It matters to me for potential future sales purposes when I have sharp looking 1909 Obak frameless back and the best it can get is an AUTHENTIC grade because it was hand cut at the factory. Take away the theoretical future sale and I don't much care about the grade, just the appearance.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Just remember that in the 1930s, kids didn't remove their Wheaties cards with paper cutters and razor blades/straight edges. That type of cutting started about the 1980s. If a Wheaties card has a perfect factory-quality cut, that pretty much speaks for itself about when it was cut.

Of course, you can find the Wheaties cards still on the full box. Collecting them them in this form bypasses the dating-the-cut problem.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Laboratory chemists can determine approximately how long ago ink was applied to paper. This is because the drying rates of inks are known and they can scientifically measure how dry is the ink. It would be interesting if a comparable test could be done to measure the exposure times of card edges.