1908 Detroit Free Press trimmed?

[orly57]

This 1908 Detroit Free Press Ty Cobb is probably one of my 3 favorite cards. This card has sat in both a psa and sgc authentic holder during its 109 years on this earth (currently PSA) and is one of only two known examples. Jeff Lichtmann owns the other (of course). It is pictured below next to mine so you can see the difference in the size of the bottom borders.I normally stay away from authentic cards, but when the pop is 2, you take it any way you can get it.
I thought it was odd that someone would trim this card, so I did some research and looked for images of other DFP cards. To my astonishment, I found several of them with equally short bottom borders. It can't be a coincidence! I though perhaps they were made to fit albums, but these are standard postcard size from top-to bottom when "untrimmed," so there would be no need to do that. Then I found the holy grail: this 8-card sheet clearly shows that the cards at the top have far shorter bottom borders than those at the bottom of the sheet. It appears they may have come like this from the factory.
You will note that Rossman is at the bottom of this sheet with a large bottom border, but I attached another Rossman I found with the short border. I thought perhaps that the cards don't always appear on the same spot on the sheets. I ran this theory by Kevin Struss, who is among the most respected minds in our hobby, and he is of the opinion that cards are always in the same spot on sheets, but that they may have been handcut at the factory this way. Psa lists these cards at 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 but vcp lists as 5 1/4 x 3 1/2. Very strange.
Anyway, I know most of you could care less about DFP, but it's an interesting issue I thought I would share with the board.