What is a card?

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

The recent SGC/Dell thing got me to wondering what others consider a card to be. Here are my thoughts on items that could be considered cards, but barely.

1. If there are perforations or dotted lines around the image, indicating a place to tear or cut to separate the item from the sheet.

2. If there are no dotted lines or perforations, but there is information on the reverse that relates directly to the image on the front, and the images on the sheet are separate entities.

3. If the item does not meet the above criteria but was obviously intended to be a card - evidenced by the existence of "real" cards that represent a final state of the item - then it's a card. An example would be cards hand-cut from a sheet that contains a blank back.

[Archive]

Posted By: David

To me, something is a trading card if it resembles a trading card (whether issued as singles, or cut/detached by the collector) AND the issuer specifically intended them to be collected or otherwise used as trading cards.

[Archive]

Posted By: Julie Vognar

postcard with a HOFer on it!

[Archive]

Posted By: Jay Miller

This question opens up one of the hobby's can of worms.

1-Is a schedule with the picture or drawing of a player on one side a card or is it a schedule? I say schedule which would take one very famous cigar "card" off alot of type collectors want lists.

2-Is a ticket a card if it has the picture or the image of a player on it? I can think of one $75,000 item from a Mastro sale a few years ago that they claimed was a card and I think was a ticket.

[Archive]

Posted By: Julie Vognar

(but then, he didn't know that I'd be able to afford it. If I didn't buy anything else.)

[Archive]

Posted By: Jay Miller

Julie--I wasn't talking about Lew's card; I was just talking in general.

[Archive]

Posted By: Bruce Moreland

How about this. I think that the "card" has to have either a blank back or some sort of related material on the back.

Those AAA things have random text and picture fragments on the back, I assume, which is one reason that they are not cards.

bruce

[Archive]

Posted By: David

For the gray areas, where there are many, it is up to how the items were distrubuted. In my opinion, a schedule card can (didn't say always will) be a trading card. Several common 1880s comic trade cards have both the typical advertising on front and league schedules on the back. As these were mass marketed to the general public and were intended to be put in scrapbooks or otherwise collected, they are definitely (in my opinion) trading cards. In fact schedules can be considered a type of advertising ... I don't kmow how the 1886 Red Stocks were distributed-- whether they were distributed to the general public or were meant to be given only to big whigs. As they have tobacco advertising on them, I would lean towards calling them cards .... With the 1863 'Match at Hoboken' pass, it is debatable whether or not it is a card. If only one was made and was given to a VIP, I don't think it qualifies as a trading card.

Other debatable areas are Playing Cards and anything that was a Proof or Pre-Production card.

In many areas, it's impossible to determine whether or not an item is a trading card, as it's impossible to tell how it was distributed. For example, a CDV of a famous team may have been sold to public through stores (many CDVs of popular folks like Abe Lincoln were sold commercially to the public), or may have been only made for members of the team-- and no one will ever know. Naturally, this will bug the heck out of type collectors, rookie card collectors and PSA registry folks.

[Archive]

Posted By: Dan Mathewson

Hi. This is Roy of LibertyForAll and MediumRareCollectibles and other Square-Meal-Trader names. I agree with Scott, with a few additions:

1. A card can certainly have the perforations on the edges. I have several AAA-graded cards with perforated edges. They came right out of packages of Charmin. I call them my "Whipple Collection".

2. Anything which can be cut out of a bona-fide Encyclopedia, Magazine, Newspaper, TV Guide, Billboard, Restaurant Menu, Horse Racing Guide, Sears Catalog, Phone Book, or Junk Mail Advertisement is also considered a card! Photocopies can only be considered under special circumstances.

3. Anything else which highly reputable and accurate graders, such as AAA and PRO, decide to be worthy of slabing shall also be considered a card. (Note that eBay allows them to be sold under the CARD category, and that is virtually a "final word" on the topic).

4. Anything I make in my garage in Hawaii is a card as long as it is made of paper, cardboard, toilet tissue (or kleenex), chip-board or plastic. This includes recycled paper and plastic products, and assumes that AAA will grade it (no problem there).

5. Anything my Aunt Phyllis finds in my dead Uncle Bob's attic, dresser, hat-box, his best sunday suit, or in the glove-box of his old Model-T shall be considered a card and unquestionably authentic.

If you have any questions about what I've listed here, or about anything else about cards and you want to talk to an authority, give me a call. My number is listed on AAA-Grading's site.

God Bless and Liberty For All!

-roy