How much does writing on cards hurt their value?

[mrmopar]

My comments were 15-20 years later than this example. By the time I started buying cards, the hobby was more developed and people knew better, but as a kid with no direct connection to the hobby yet other than buying packs at the local grocery store, I had no clue. I tacked some cards on my wall, taped others, trimmed some and even laminated several (the school had a real laminator and then we discovered the retail stuff you could cut from rolls! I can say I never wrote on my cards though. It was 1978 and cards were not worth anything more than the price of a pack to us anyways, so we were not hurting anything by taping them to our walls. I don't recall when I made my first visit to a card store, but do remember even then, some people would write prices on the backs of the cards themselves. Usually pencil, but sometimes pen!

Originally Posted by wdwfan

I can't understand why people didn't take better care of their cards back then.