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Posted By: Bruce Babcock

I, too, do not remember seeing very many spectacular condition cards in the 80s. The best cards were marked EX/MT, meaning that they had some of the characteristics of an EX card and some of the characteristics of a MINT card. That label covered a fairly wide range of condition. Then the term Gem Mint came along which to most of us meant "a blazer." Like new from the pack, with no centering issues or print dots.

Later the grades higher than EX/MT came along, namely near mint, near mint-mint, mint 9, mint 10, mint 96, mint 98, really really super-duper mint, etc. Grades that you need a loupe to really acertain. Certainly a huge emphasis on corner wear. With these grades came the price multipliers. With these came a greater temptation to trim or press and trim.

I have had cards come back (in the late 1990s) from PSA marked "does not meet minimum thickness requirement," or words to that effect. This implies that someone pressed the card and trimmed it because the card apeared to be a PSA 8 minimally. I confronted the seller of the card. He of course denied owning any such equipment and of course I can't prove that he did. He may have acquired the card from someone and else and flipped it to me. The same card came back from both SGC and CSA as simply "trimmed."

So the fact that companies measure thickness implies that they are aware of pressing and trimming as a tactic. But the fact that they caught this particular card also means that they are good at weeding out the cards altered in this way. If companies can be influenced in some way to overlook this evidence . . . ? Who can say?

I've heard the stories about the PSA Wagner, but they are third and fourth hand. Unless someone was in the room with the guy who pressed the card, and can prove it, we will never know.

My choice has been to collect stuff I like and not concern myself with the high grade entombed stuff. I'm not willing to pay the premium for differences that I can't see without a loupe and/or might have been created by tampering. I also tend to focus on issues that most people wouldn't bother trying to alter. I will, like most of us, get cards graded before selling them.