Will provenance become more important?

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Posted By: Rob Dewolf

Harry's comment, "Personally, I would pay a premium for such a card mainly because I would feel comfortable that the card was totally original," made me think of two T206s below in my collection that came from Lionel Carter's collection.

Both are graded "Authentic" by SGC. Goode, the one on the left, has rounded bottom corners and never would be confused with a high-grade example, so the "A" designation isn't that big of a deal (IMO). The Easterly, however, has a near-mint appearance. In this case, the grader caught the trimming.

While provenance can be a cool thing to have attached to a card (and I certainly think it is), I'm not sure that's it a guarantee a card is "pure." I remember a few years ago Lew Lipset auctioned a collection that belonged to a prominent, pioneer collector (I don't remember the name and am too lazy to dig out the catalog). This collector had trimmed a huge amount of cards so that they would fit into albums. The trimming in this case was obvious, but the fact is that for many, many years doing such a thing wasn't looked upon in the same way it is today. While I doubt Mr. Carter trimmed the two cards below, my guess is that when he acquired them he didn't give them the scrutiny that a collector would today when searching for evidence of trimming.

So even though these two cards have the provenance of being from the Lionel Carter collection, that was no guarantee they were unaltered (according to the SGC grader, of course.)