Factory cuts vs trimming

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Bigdaddy

One would think that with a high enough magnification, identifying trimmed cards could be detected, at least to a high degree. Looking at any given edge, I envision differences in color (due to accumulated dirt, oil, etc.) from handling the cards for many years, indentations, fiber orientation, etc of a card that was cut 50 or more years ago to one that was cut in the recent past, by most probably a different method.

All valid points. But when they spend less than 60 seconds on each card, that kind of scrutiny ain't happening. Right now the model we have, and all anyone cares about is the turn around time on grading. If I send in a minty Mickey Mantle card, my chief concern is going to be that I get it back in a week or so if I pay for that service, NOT that the grader spends extra TLC time in looking under loupes and evaluating edge precision, getting a second or maybe even a third opinion, etc. etc. But perhaps that the type of terms we need to start thinking in for super high-end or rare cards?

As others have pointed out though - for pure matters of dimension and size concern - I would think they could implement a way to measure cards digitally down to a hundreth of an inch or something. If you can do this and make that kind of measurement routine - then there wouldn't be a reason they couldn't quickly measure all cards that way. If it becomes commonplace, then whatever the current "Min Size" requirements are, you would think they could be drastically tightened up based on what the new micro-discrepancies turn out to be. I would be willing to bet that even the graders would be surprised with something like that - at exactly what was more or less normal for a card to be "off" by out of the pack.