SGC Determining Color Added

[mikecala98]

Originally Posted by steve B

That bit of blue on the corner doesn't seem factory. I would call it a stain rather than color added, which to me is more things like adding yellow to hide some chipping on the edges.
But it is color, and it did get added, so they're not wrong.

Yeah I agree on the semantics. I think I'd prefer it to say MARK and not COLOR ADDED as if adding blue to a white border makes any sense as an intentional alteration.

[jchcollins]

I love SGC, but they often get stuff like this wrong still. Agreed "mark" would be more accurate in this case.

[nolemmings]

Are you sure there was no other color added? If so, a black light should help detect it.
In my experience SGC will correctly downgrade a card for such corner staining as displayed on your card, but not to the point of calling it authentic. Granted, my focus is on pre-war, but here is a card from 1916 that shows obvious coloring that could not possibly be intended to deceive:

My example is actually pretty nice compared to about a dozen others from the Green-Joyce set that have sold over the years with much more prominent teal coloring in the corners-- all of which got numeric grades, like this: