Posted By:
Al CrisafulliHand-cut cards are tough, from a grading standpoint.
On one hand, that's a beautiful card.
On the other hand, there's no way to tell when that right edge was cut - back when the card was initially cut off the strip, or ten minutes before it was sent in for grading.
If a T206 card has three nice edges and one ragged one, the ragged edge will bring down the grade. If someone were to snip off the ragged edge with a paper cutter, the card would be rejected as trimmed.
With a hand-cut card, if the card has three nice edges and one ragged one, it would be possible to snip off the ragged edge and have the card look perfect - when, in fact, it had been altered to improve the grade. But since the card is SUPPOSED to be cut, it's tougher to tell what the intent of the cut was - to separate the card from the strip, or to alter the card to improve the grade.
So if there are dotted lines, most of the time they want to see ALL the dotted lines.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but at least it makes sense to me.
-Al