[Alaskanmade]

Centering is a weird one for me.

I started out collecting Trading Cards (TCG) in 1995, only getting into baseball cards later on. There have been a lot of interesting parallels with regard to authentication, rarity, demand, etc. However the one area where there is a huge difference is when it comes to centering and miscut cards.

With an TCG card if it is off center most players and collectors do not really care, and when a card is miscut it actually becomes many more times desire-able, and potentially increases its value by a factor of 10x to 100x.

Obviously the opposite is true for vintage baseball cards.

The often stated rationale I have heard is that from 1900 - 1940 quality control of baseball cards was very sloppy, and the number of miscut cards is quite high in vintage baseball. Compare that to TCG's which had much better quality control, and you get the difference in price.

I checked PSA population reports and its is easy to see that this is at least partly true. Looking at the T206 pop reports, around 6% of each card graded has a qualifier (which includes Offcenter and Miscut, as well as some other qualifiers which do not apply such as Staining, and Marks). Looking at the PSA pop report for a famous TCG set less than 1% of cards include a qualifier.
There are problems with this direct comparison including the relative popularity of grading between hobbies, what cards are selected for grading.

Regardless of this in both vintage baseball cards and MTG, miscut cards are "rare". With TCG's they are very rare, and in vintage baseball cards, they are rare-ish. My guess is that the relative level of rarity is what makes one a desirable oddity, and one a defect.