How do you actually determine centering ratios?
 

I hear people all the time throw out numbers like 80/20 or 90/10 when they describe the centering of a card.

When I look at a card, I can see that it's off centered but no way can I determine whether its 80/20, 90/10, 65/35 and so on.:eek:

I am curious how some of you actually come up with your numbers when it comes to card centering.

Technically you measure the border on each side at the part of the card that is most off-center. But I just estimate based on looking at it, as I'm sure many do. Personally I think it's hard to tell exactly, unless there's some app or computer program that can calculate it out there that I am unaware of.

I am probably fooling myself but I feel I have seen enough cards to be able to get close enough with an eyeball estimate.

Yeah, I'm pretty confident that at this point I can eyeball it to within 10%.

If you need an actual number and have a scan, just enlarge the scan then get a ruler and hold it up to the screen and measure the borders in mm. If one is 2 and the other is 6, then that's 25/75 centering and so on.

The problem is certain cards may have borders only 1mm wide. So a shift of 0.7mm makes it 0.3 mm on 1 side and 1.7 mm on another, or about 85/15. The same shift on a card with 3mm borders makes it 2.3 mm and 3.7 mm or about 65/35.

Not fair for small bordered card collectors.

If you like the centering it's centered just fine for your collection. If you don't like the centering for you collection skip it. Buy what looks good to you and fits your collection, not some nebulous measurement and never based on the grade.

Only slightly related...I ran a nice little shop back when everyone had a shop with a partner. He had great tolerance for centering but not wear. I had great tolerance for wear but not centering...we would often disagree on valuations. He was a hell of a guy though and we worked it out.

Someone put a nice informational document on the PSA message board:

https://forums.collectors.com/messag...hreadid=897961

What is centered and why does a card have to be centered. Were T206s or Old Judges intended to be issued perfectly centered.

Is 'perfect centering' just a later day fiction, like 'rookie cards.' Is it nothing more than a cognitive bias.

In one of his old books, Mr. Mint said a mint card was in the condition it came out of a pack. Pack fresh. So a mint card could be badly off centered. An interesting concept.

If the grading companies took the time it would be fairly easy to get the centering down to a gnats ass by using a high resolution scan and then using a software program to determine the ratios of the much larger area available for measurement - but hey, what do you expect for 10 bucks (or what ever they happen to be charging to grade a card)?

So I am one those "centering freaks" and the process I use is to do a hi res scan of the card and then I open up the scan in Picassa so I can rotate left - right etc.

Then I use my trusty JRuler which allows me to determine the number of pixels of white space on each border S/S & T/B

From there it's just divide the number of pixels on one side by the total number of pixels on both sides to get a percentage.

JRuler is a free tool that can be found at :

http://www.spadixbd.com/freetools/jruler.htm

hope this helps..............

I find all you responses very interesting but really loved the link that was sent by Jewish-collector.

Thanks to all.

Here's an easy rule of thumb:

if you're a seller its 60-40

if you're a buyer it 80-20

The back of a PSA 10 only has to be 75/25 or better?!

that's lame...what kind of gem mint 10 has any defects whatsoever?

....and it only needs "55/45 to 60/40 or better" front centering. Card grading is so laughable. With a gem mint grade requiring less than perfect centering, it's just a matter of time before we see an 11.

Love it!!! :)

Very carefully.......