Grading cards that are "damaged" on release

[steve B]

Originally Posted by BeanTown

A grading company should grade the card for how it looks, regardless of the manufacturing process. Many minor league cards are wrapped in cellophane which causes soft corners. Little Sun Jeters are hand packed in a hard plastic container.

I think there should be a difference shown for how the manufacturer intended the card to be issued.
Stuff like T201, T202, the whiffleball sleeves like the one shown, and the Dixie lids were intended to be issued with folds. 51 Topps, Ringside, the SI for kids cards and a few others came in perforated panels. Batter ups and 64 Topps standups and others came with die cuts as part of the design.

And nobody expects any of those to only get the same grade as a card with a big crease or holes.

The game cards have rounded corners.

And that's fine since they were intended to have those round corners.

Any card intended to be cut off a box or other item can get a number grade if all the printed borders showing where the card ended and the next card or packaging began.

And hardly anyone thinks they should all be treated as trimmed (For what it's worth I consider them trimmed, but since they were intended to be cut out I can see the other side of things. plus I wouldn't pass up most of those cards simply because it wasn't still on the box or was missing the tab. )

I'm still a bit on the fence about the stapled cards from chips. Obviously the manufacturer intended for them all to be stapled. I'd love to see the original complete packaging since it looks like they were stapled to wood. Maybe the top of a wooden chip can? That would be pretty cool.

So it is a lot more like the minor league sets and the little sun, and for that matter a few sets from Classic and a couple other manufacturers.
The cards were intended to be rectangular, but they picked a packing method that caused some damage.

But in some cases I think that's also let slide a bit - Cracker jacks, and some other cards issued with products that left stains get a bit of leeway?


Steve B