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T206Collector...answer to this question.
While measuring the sides on a 1997 Topps card will prove definitive, the best way to tell if a pre-war card is trimmed is by looking at the edges -- perpendicularly to yourself -- and seeing how they were cut. If the edge, again, looking from front to back, is squared off, it may be trimmed. An SGC grader once explained that clean edges are actually slightly rounded. You can also notice color variations from one edge to the other. I stopped relying just on a ruler a long time ago when it came to judging whether a T206 card had been trimmed. I believe it to be common knowledge in the hobby that dealers in the mid-1980's purchased over-sized T cards with rounded corners that they could shave into appropriately sized T cards with sharp corners, for purposes of getting higher grades from PSA. (This is one of the reasons I look suspiciously at high grade/sharp cornered T206 cards.)
Having said that, SGC has rejected T206 cards that I have submitted as being "too small" for the issue. That is, they didn't want to go on record as saying they saw evidence of trimming. They just felt that the card was too small to have been issued by the factory that way.