Question about grading hand cut cards.

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by Rookiemonster

So if someone bought this sheet had it cut perfectly and the other flaws were not present. So the card graded a psa 10 you would be fine with this? Or only if PSA put hand cut on the flip?

PSA has declared (and holds pretty true) that they won't grade it if it doesn't have a factory original cut. That's why you see so many 1979 Wayne Gretzky cards in BGS holders; they couldn't detect the cut difference between a current cut and a factory cut, so they didn't reject them.

It's also similar that you see so many 1993 SP Jeters in BGS slabs, because PSA rejects many for not being factory cut full size (2.5x3.5) and BGS does not care as much. Many of those cards were cut small by Topps, but shouldn't have been. PSA rejects them, BGS slabs them. PSA has stopped slabbing factory short 1975 Topps mini baseball for the same reason. Those factory sizes were all over the map, but PSA has a minimum size for the issue they'll accept, and all the other ones get returned ungraded.

It's their game, you play by their rules. Once you learn what their rules are, it's not too hard. But again, you don't have to play in their sandbox. There are three grading services, you can take your business to a different one, or you can ignore the grading services.

[Leon]

Case made...The sheet he was on was probably about 100-200 dollars.
I should add, this is more about buyers than grading companies. I would grade them as such too. It's more about the sales side. The whole sheet isn't even a rare sheet to obtain.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1928-W-565-...MAAOSwWxNYqfLT
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[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Leon

Case made...The sheet he was on was probably about 100-200 dollars.
I should add, this is more about buyers than grading companies. I would grade them as such too. It's more about the sales side. The whole sheet isn't even a rare sheet to obtain.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1928-W-565-...MAAOSwWxNYqfLT
.

The sheets are available but cutting them out well is actually challenging. The lines between the individual cards are not straight; you can tell that the paste-up of the original art was made from a bunch of different singles pieced together by hand then screened rather from than a single sheet of images with lines drawn on. I cut down a damaged sheet to get at this card:



I had to carefully calculate how to cut and I had to sacrifice the integrity of neighboring cards to get there.

Fortunately for the baseball cards, they are 'jokers' and were placed on the bottom row of the sheet, so there is only one really hairy cut to make, at the top of the card.

As for hand cutting standards with PSA, I was not aware of them when I sent in this card:



I can probably bust it out and redo the cuts and get the grade up on eye appeal, but I don't care...

As for the overall question of grading cut out cards, it all depends on the item. When the mfg. or publisher intended that the item be cut into cards, I don't think it is right to stigmatize use of the product as intended. Here is the Pac-Man RC as it appeared in the Japanese magazine:



Seems pretty clear to me: labeled as "cards" with separate numbers and backs. Why wouldn't you cut them out? Ditto these, labeled as cards and with dotted lines:



Hector "Macho Man" Camacho's RC.

Now, this kind of thing (A18 album page), I never agreed with cutting out:





But strip cards, hell, they were meant to be cut; were kids really expected to keep an 18 inch long strip of paper?