Million dollar mantle

[savedfrommyspokes]

If a lower end card is my only choice due to cost, my choice on a higher priced/lower end card would be one with nicely formed corners, some honest wear, reasonable centering, minimal creasing versus a copy of a card with corner wear/rounding, more obvious creasing, and/or some sort of "intentional" front damage.

For these reasons, I prefer the left copy. The centering is consistent between these two copies, but the corner wear is far less obvious and the creasing is less noticeable on the left copy. The left copy's major flaw is the honest front surface wear which would be my preference over the right copy's rounding on corners and what appears in the scan to be light (pencil) marks to the left of Mantle's face.

However, I appear to be in the minority as to what qualities are more appealing (corner wear versus front surface wear), as the copy on the right sold for almost $5k more than the copy on the left.