Excuse me while I think back on the 'good old days' (6 years ago) when trimmed cards were frowned upon. You rarely saw a trimmed high-grade card sold by a major auction house unless it was in a PSA holder, and you rarely (perhaps never?) saw them selling raw trimmed commons. I was once surprised when SGC returned a card to me with a reject slip that said 'evidence of trimming' (no slab).
Now they slab trimmed cards as 'AUTH' and PSA 'AUTH' slabbed cards actually say 'Trimmed' on the label. When did this start?
Are more trimmed cards ending up in high-grade slabs now? (It seems like it to me). Are the trimmers getting more sophisticated, the graders getting lazy or are we just encouraging them with our tacit approval?
How do you feel about buying/selling trimmed cards? When they arrive as the dredges of a larger lot, what do you do with them? I've been filing mine away in a dark corner, never to be mentioned again. The pile's up to 12
Excuse the brain dump, but sitting here looking at 'the deadly dozen', I'm scratching my head in wonder.