[Archive]

Posted By: Rick McQuillan

Kevin, thanks for the great post. Here is my two cents.

I have been looking at some of my E cards and T206's under a 2x magnifyer, a 10x magnifyer, and a 100x microscope. None of the corner wear on my cards looks similar to the corners on your cards. On my cards with similar corner wear I can see some "build up", or thickening of material, but the built up material looks more like it is due to wear and separation of paper rather than the fairly thick, solid material that appears in your photos. Under 100k magnification the corner wear appears almost like a cotton ball and I can see many individual fibers.

The other issue that makes it difficult to judge your cards is that we can't see the edges. On a card with normal corner wear the edges with the wear will be thicker than the edges with little or no wear.

Another indication (and I can't really tell from your photos) is that the corner build up on your cards appears to be of uniform thickness throughout the entire wear area, but with normal wear the thickest part of the wear would be on the very tip of the corner and the "unlayering" would get thinner as you get nearer the body of the card.

My guess is that both cards are altered.

Gosh, I need to get a life!

Rick