A Simple Poll. What is Your O/C Preference?

[JollyElm]

I'm wondering what people's preferences are regarding off-centering. (If you never buy off-centered cards, this poll is not for you, so move on.)

If you were buying (forced to buy?) an off-centered card and had to choose among these four possibilities (I kept it real basic by only including one-way centering issues, and not adding other multiples such as top AND left, bottom AND right, etc.), which one would you prefer???

Which orientation looks the 'best' or is the 'most acceptable' in your mind?


1. Pushed to the left, as so...1966mantleleft.jpg. 2. Pushed to the right, as so...1966mantleright.jpg


3. Pushed to the top, as so...1966mantletop.jpg 4. Pushed to the bottom, as so...1966mantlebottom.jpg


(FWIW, these cards are just composite images of the same card. I used photoshop to manipulate the original screen grab to push the image to each of the four separate extremes - left, right, top, and bottom.)

[rsdill2]

That's some pretty slick photoshopping there. Kudos.

Never really thought about it but it's neat to see them all in a row like that. Suppose if I had to choose I'd go with the last one (pushed to the bottom) but I'm not real sure why. I suppose when I first analyze a card, that's the last direction I mentally measure so to me it's the least obvious.

[Bill77]

I went with pushed to the top, because my art degree tells me that matted photos are supposed to have a larger bottom boarder and small top boarder. It was just something hammered into me every semester while cutting mattes for my photography class finals for four years. But honestly speaking I have cards that are off center in every direction because sometimes the price is too good to pass up.

[riggs336]

For some reason (maybe because I'm a moderate liberal) my eyes tend to concentrate on the center and left parts of cards.

[Neal]

4 ... and then 2

[Tere1071]

Originally Posted by riggs336

For some reason (maybe because I'm a moderate liberal) my eyes tend to concentrate on the center and left parts of cards.

This brought a smile to my face.

[Casey2296]

For left/right I would take #1 based on the image, Mantle is facing left to a more open space because of the skinny border and allows the eye to flow off the image and leave the card. #2 he is facing a wall with nowhere for your eye to leave the image. The diagonal red border on the left also helps balance against the heavy border on the right.

Up down would be #4 pushed to the bottom since the large red name border balances with the large top border.

[frankhardy]

Originally Posted by riggs336

For some reason (maybe because I'm a moderate liberal) my eyes tend to concentrate on the center and left parts of cards.

I voted pushed to the top. However, with the above logic, I think I want to change mine to severely miscut to the right.....like so....

[One 'ol Cat]

Centering may be my most important criterion. I could accept squashed corners, slight creases, wax stains - way before I could accept bad centering. A lot of the Topps issues in the 70's suffered from centering issues, and I remember, as a teen, combing through the doubles for the best centering.
...Now if you hand me a badly centered Ty Cobb...I might be malleable...

[Phil68]

To the bottom. It's really the only centering issue I can live with at all. I've tried to talk myself into cards with poor centering and can't do it.

[JollyElm]

Virtually 90% of respondents prefer a card that's either pushed up or down, with the vast majority preferring it closer to the bottom. This certainly fits in with how the human eye operates, but I'm somewhat surprised more people didn't choose one of the side to side options. Interesting.