I know the pay-off is substantial, but I'm still shocked at the cajones of somebody to trim a card, that is already 20K+ card nowadays. They've gotta have a lot of confidence that it's gonna pass.
I don't even have the confidence to cut cards from sheets or strips that are meant to be cut, with my crappy Staples issued paper cutter
. But I do understand that people with the right tools and skill-set, can make it seem imperceptible to most.
I've said this before, but I set-up at hundreds of shows in the 80's and into the early 90's, and truly vintage NM to Gem Mint cards, were very, very few...and far between...and most of those were also trimmed or flattened out in brick like lucite holders to make them look better then they actually were.
Even cards I pulled right out of packs, I had a hard time, in good conscience, calling them MINT. I'd always just call them NM to be on the safe side.
That they started to become more common, when these huge price fluctuations began to develop between mid-graded stuff and high graded stuff, has proven to be not such a coincidence I guess.
That Dimaggio "6" would have been the centerpiece of almost any dealers table, because that "8.5", would have never existed in the first place.
Altering cards is not NEW. Back in the 80's, dealers used to color in the borders of 71' Topps cards, to get an extra buck or two a card. Can you imagine what somebody would do for an extra 100K a card?
