Factory cuts vs trimming

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by cardsagain74

Whenever I sort through all of my late '60s and early '70s cards, it's so easy to see how inconsistent the size of the cuts can be. It's also been mentioned how this was naturally the case in many prior issues too, both pre-war and post-war vintage.

With this in mind, I'm curious why people usually assume the worst when they think something is "swimming inside a slab", etc. I know PSA has missed plenty of trimmed cards, but with as common as various size cuts can be, wouldn't a slightly short cut (that they decided to grade rather than return as "min size") still be a more likely reason?

Or, am I really underestimating how often the culprit actually is trimming?

It's really all about how much evidence has come to light lately showing the scumbaggery of card doctors, and it makes everyone second guess everything. Most of us collectors knew some garbage was done in the past (using magic markers to make 1971 cards look beautiful, for instance), but in this new era of the graded card, who knew how bad it was going to get?! So it's really out of an abundance of caution to treat any 'very short' card as a trim job first, and then do some research and comparison efforts to determine if you're satisfied it actually came out of the factory that way. That is my approach.