Trimmed? Or something else?

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I have an article (I think) coming out in the next VCBC on this situation. Here is an excerpt:

I sometimes feel that the grading services must decide that some day, say a Monday, is trimmed card day and that every tenth card submitted that day will be kicked back as altered. I submitted a partial set of N28 cards to SGC for grading. They refused to grade or encapsulate one, the Jack Dempsey, claiming that it was trimmed on the upper edge. The card was returned to me ungraded as trimmed. I was rather surprised by their determination that the card was altered since I had purchased the card from Kit Young and had carefully inspected it when it arrived, and was therefore reasonably certain of its status. Also, we are not talking about a high-end card that someone would trim to get that extra push to the “investment grades”; it was a collector’s grade vg card because of minor back damage from album removal that I wanted graded only to have a fully graded set for display purposes. The trimmed determination just made no sense. Since I was convinced that SGC was wrong and did not want to spend a full grading fee plus shipping for a review that I doubted would be unbiased, I decided to submit the card with a new order. If they really have an expertise in grading vintage cards, surely the folks at SGC would see the same evidence of trimming the second time around. The card was returned to me the second time, only encapsulated and authenticated as an 1887 A & G card grading “40” (very good). I guess it arrived on “open your eyes a little wider” Tuesday.

Just after the N28 Dempsey incident, I submitted a beautiful T218 Mike (Twin) Sullivan that I purchased at the National in 2000. It too was returned ungraded, supposedly because of trimming. I decided to resubmit the card with a new order. I resubmitted the card in a batch of T218 cards and lo and behold, it is now graded a near mint 84 (see the slab), which means that SGC decided that month that the card is genuine and unaltered.