General Card Grading Question

[CowboysGuide]

Sorry if this isn't the best place to pose this question.

How are professional card grading companies supposed to handle print marks if they exist on all 'known' examples of the card? Is it assumed by them that a perfectly clean card does exist?

I've been reading this forum for a while and really enjoy all the expert opinions and seeing some extremely rare stuff. Even though I am a football card/memorabilia collector, I've learned a lot here that can be applied to my collecting habits.

Thanks in advance...
Steve

[Matt]

Originally Posted by CowboysGuide

How are professional card grading companies supposed to handle print marks if they exist on all 'known' examples of the card? Is it assumed by them that a perfectly clean card does exist?

If all known copies of a card have a certain mark, then shouldn't we presume that is how it was printed and therefore it should not be downgraded for said mark.

[ethicsprof]

except for the unique card---e.g. 1921 E120type Herpolsheimer of Geo. J.
Burns.
otherwise, excellent logic.

best,
barry

[steve B]

I think it depends on wether the mark is a misprinted mark like a fisheye or ink smear or something like that, or if it's something that's on the plate like a scratch or a section that wasn't made quite right.

The misprints should be treated like any other misprinting mark.

The plate problems should be treated as just the way all cards like that wee made.

Other stuff that goes wrong with the printing is a bit more of a gray area. One T206 I sent in got a 40 probably because of a paper inclusion. A bit of foreign matter, in this case a small hard object of some sort that is actually inside the cardboard. You can see it as a white dot on the left just below the underarm area.


So, it's as manufactured except for a tiny spot where the ink over the paper inclusion area wore off. Technically a scuff, and they could have treated it more harshly. Or they could have treated it as a natural effect of the printing process and given it a higher grade. Even under a magnifier the corners are as nice as they look.

Steve B

[CowboysGuide]

Thanks for the help on this topic.

I suppose it's a guess by the card owner if the print defect is on all cards. Just because I've seen 12 cards of a specific player, all with the same line or mark, does that mean they all have it? Do the card grading companies have Gem Mint examples of each type of card to use as a benchmark? I would find this hard to believe for some of the stuff you guys show on this forum, but maybe more of a possibility for newer cards (1950-80).

[steve B]

They don't need gem copies of any card on hand. Once a person has seen and felt a large number of a particular sort of card and understands the printing process it's just a matter of deciding if it's genuine and figuring out how it grades with the centering and defects.

A scan of the card in question would help, most print defects look different from plate damage or stuff that was part of the image.

Just seeing a bunch of cards with the same defect doesn't mean it's on every example of that card, although it could be. Modern examples are easier, so I'll use a couple of those.

I've got a few 75 minis of Kingman on the desk right now, all with an identical fisheye in the G of Giants. Because of how those happen it's probably on hundreds of them if not thousands. If it's on all of them, it's still a print defect. Granted, it would be one that means there could never be one graded 10 but still a defect.

The opposite end of things is on many 81 fleer the people making the masks for the plates let the tape overlap the picture. So every one of them has printed in cellotape in the picture. Not a printing defect, just a design defect that was on the plates.

Steve B