Define poor-fair condition

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Like porn, I know it when I see it.

We recently had a thread I started on the difference between the PSA 1 (p-f) and the SGC 10-20. I think that PSA's convention reflects an older way of thinking about low end cards. In the past, before slabbing, I think poor condition could encompass a trimmed card because we collectors back when generally treated poor as garbage-worthy (major damage/alterations), fair as basically intact but beaten. You took a poor or fair card only as a filler. Then we got slabbers who sold their services on the grounds that people were being fooled by trimmed high grade cards (I know, the irony is boundless). So, for about 10 years a trimmed card was persona non grata regardless of how it looked and an encapsulated p-f card was worth much more because it ostensibly was not trimmed or altered. I think that is one reason SGC split poor and fair into separate levels, realizing that people were paying more for fair than poor and that a catch-all would be less desirable. Then the services realized that there were quite a few cards that were worth extracting a grading fee from collectors simply to authenticate and encapsulate. Now we have trimmed cards slabbed as authentic, but never as poor (at least not on purpose). This is my roundabout explanation of how grading perceptions as to the low end have shifted over the last 10-15 years. Today, I do not think that a trimmed card should ever be described with any grade of any kind and also that anyone selling a trimmed card should state it even if a picture is furnished. I think that is where tne market is. So, to answer the question, if the cards were trimmed, I do not think poor-fair is an accurate description of them.