Minimum T206 size

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Posted By: Joann

Where can I look up the minimum size of T206's (or any other card for that matter)? I always see in descriptions that a card is X/Y" short, but short of what? I don't know how much natural variation there was in card size.

And to avoid hijacking a similar thread about the fit of E90-1's in grading holders, I'll post this here. Would this make anyone nervous? If the graders design slabs for maximum size, does that mean there was truly this much variation in the T/B sizes of T206's?

(This is not trying to bash the graders - I've seen cards that underfit holders from each of the Big 3 graders. I'm just wondering if there is a point at which the obvious gaps between the card size and holder size start to raise questions about the card.)

Thanks,

Joann

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Posted By: Judge Dred (Fred)

Joann,

SGC and GAI use custom inserts. The inserts can be cut to fit the card. PSA seems to have a few different size holders. The one pictured in your post is what I figure is a PSA T206 holder. My guess is that PSA, in their short sightedness, designed the holder expecting all T206 cards to fit into the holder. I thnk PSA used the larger size holders when encapsulating larger than normal T206 cards or if they happened to run out of the standard T206 card holders. Rather than wait for a new shipment of holders they stuffed the T206 cards into those "card condoms" to keep them from slipping around.

I couldn't imagine PSA stuffing an E90-1 card into one of those T206 holders because the E90-1 cards are a little larger than the T206 cards.

I could be wrong but that's my guess on the holders.

Getting back to minimum T206 card sizes my hypothesis is that it depends upon the submitter of the card. If your last name happened to be Harris then PSA was farily liberal as to the size of the card. If you happen to be Joe (or Joann) collector then the size requirement would probably be tighter.

Overall, as you are probably aware, there are different sizes for different brands of T206 cards. ABs are a good example of this.

1-7/16 x 2-5/8 is the published/accepted standard for T206 sizing, but we pretty much know that this can vary.

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Posted By: Brian

I have several T206 cards in PSA holders that look like the one shown. In fact, this is one reason I prefer SGC and GAI in general--the custom fit prevents cards from sliding around. Over time, there is no doubt in my mind this sliding damages the card. Why PSA continues to do things this way, I haven't a clue.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Somebodys got to be stupid enuff to state the obvious, but in case anyone out there is even more stoopid than me, one resource for the size of cards is any price guide.

Where can I look up the minimum size of T206's (or any other card for that matter)?

Well the guides don't really give you the "minimum" but they give you a .... you guessed it ... a guide.

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Posted By: Dylan

Not to hijack but Ive heard that a lot of people think the Harris collection was overgraded by PSA even giving trimmed cards grades without qualifier. Isn't PSA supposed to keep all information pertaining to ownership private and kept from the graders? If they informed the graders that they were grading the "Harris collection" before grading the cards then all of these grades are tainted. I wouldn't touch them. I know it's a rare circumstance when a holder is allowed to be branded with a collectors name but if they allow it the graders should never know of it until the process of grading is finished. Does anyone know if graders are informed when they are grading a "prestegious" collection beforehand?

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Posted By: barrysloate

Joann- there are also many T206 that originate from shoebox collections that were miscut in the factory and unfortunately can not be graded. They have not been tampered with, they are just poorly manufactured cards.

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Posted By: mvsnyc

barry is correct guys...a lot of the cards were not cut perfectly, old school printing/cutting methods...many of you are forever bashing the grading companies, but the graders do NOT know who's cards they are grading!

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Posted By: Joann

Thanks guys. I appreciate the input. I guess I still don't quite know the answer to my question - if someone says a card is 1/16" short, does that mean short to the published standard dimensions? If published dimensions are "normal", then I'd expect lots and lots and lots of cards to be "short" because of the inherent manufacturing variation mentioned above.

I thought maybe there was a minimum T/B and a minimum S/S that was known or published somewhere. Sometimes PSA will return cards for "minimum size", so I thought there might be a standard somewhere.

And somehow, I did manage to be smart enough to check price guides and Lew's Encyclopedia looking for minima. Not sure how that happened - must have been a good day.

Joann

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Posted By: Dave

Joann,

Here's measured data from a set of about 500 Piedmont T206's. This is basically a histogram in numeric form. This has been posted before.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/153652/message/1090717955/last-1090718359/T206+sizes

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Posted By: Eric B

The above link with caliper measurements is very interesting. If we go one step further, an standard measurement of the black boder can be done. Then we get a ratio of the card width and length to the border width and length.

At that point, wouldn't it be easy to measure a good scan of any card to see what the ratio, and consequently the complete card size is.

Then any famous card can be measured from a scan to determine trimming, if you know what I mean.

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Posted By: JimB

Dylan,
The entire Harris collection was re-holdered and re-labled as "Harris Collection" when is was prepared to be auctioned in 1999.
JimB

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Eric B: I have no idea what you mean. I wonder - am I alone in failing to understand this?

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Posted By: Dave

Eric,

I understand exactly what you mean.

The assumption (which I think is good) is that the black frame around a picture is a known distance. I don't know what this is but I do think it is a constant value.

By measuring this on a picture of a card, you could measure both the total width or height and the associated frame size. Since the frame is known, you can calculate the card size.

I've tried this a few times with limited results. The problem is that the resolution usually isn't good enough to accurately measure the frame and extend this to the card itself.

Another problem with this is if the scan isn't 100% flat. Often, especially with a camera (rather than a scanner) the card isn't really parallel, and the frame isn't the same width or height across the card. In theory, this is OK, as the ratio of card to frame is constant and can still be applied, but it is difficult.

If someone would like to try this as an experiment, I'll supply high res scans of cards, along with the accurate width and height measurements.

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Posted By: Eric B

I assume the black border is always the same for all T206's, regardless of the outside cut. If, for example, the width of the inside black border is always 1.20 inches compared to the average card size of 1.40 inches, then we know a T206 should always have roughly a 120 to 140 ratio.

Then a scan of a famous card, the McNall Gretsky Wagner comes to mind, can be measured on a PC. Just pull it up, see how many units (whatever photo program you use) wide the black border is and compare it to the full card.

So if you measure the black border to be 360 units, and the whole card to be 400 units, you can figure out the card width is 1.33 inches...definitely trimmed.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

This is precisely what I thought that you meant, however, I dismissed that understanding because I fail to see how it can be applied to the t206 situation in which the t/b natural variation has been demonstrated to be greater than an eighth of an inch.

Well that, and a belief that relying on mathematics to establish trimming is wishful thinking, imho.

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Posted By: Eric B

According to the above link, only 3 out of 524 were less than 1.42 inches. It seems that any card under 1.42 inches is either trimmed or substandard to be graded at all.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

If you owned those three "substandard" but entirely legitimate cards, and they were important - would you be happy with the determination that they do not fit a mathematical model of the average card, and therefore you are sol?

Edited to add: I did not use those three cards in my computation of t/b variance.

Further edited - I also did not use the outliers at the other end of the size range.

I don't have a lot of t206s, so I really can not be sure what the typical border area of these cards is. But in looking at two, I see less than one eighth inch all around.
If the t/b variance is 1/8" then that variance has a tremendous potential for impact on any border area calculation. And although the side to side differences are less pronounced, they are still a significant percentage of the potential total area.

So, I am unsure of this approach for application to cards which exhibit as high a border area difference between cards as has been shown for this set.

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Posted By: Eric B

I'm just saying that this method could be used to measure a card. It does nothing more. But is another piece to a puzzle. And yes, I do think there should be a standard minimum that must be maintained. We consider a badly OC card to be substandard, why not a badly undercut one as well.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Total border area computation is an interesting concept. Id like to see how it works out.

And regarding minimum cut off points, it really doesn't matter what I think. The grading companies are using them. And Im not sure that we know exactly what these points are.
Id like to see how these points match the size study posted above.

Didn't Joann ask something like this ... long, long ago?

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Posted By: Joann

lolol Gil - you're right, I asked something like this long long ago on 11/17.

I kind of like the idea of measuring the image portion and establishing some guideline for overall size so you can estimate from a scan. Maybe I'll try that sometime way down the road when I have time.

But now I'm even more confused. To me, when a seller says that a card is "short" I kind of assume they are announcing it may be trimmed. If there is 1/8" variation T/B on T206's, what are people announcing something is short to? And if there isn't anything, why are they saying a card is short (casting some aspersions on it) when there isn't a real standard for determining what's short and what isn't?

So does all of this add up to not being able to use boarder size (and T/B in particular) as an indication of trimming? Just use other indicators like waviness, bat-ears, etc?

Joann

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You see kiddies, this is the life which you are destined to live, the constant suspicion directed at the cards which you love. And the accusations: do you see where the pencil was erased? Is that red marker in the background field? Has this been soaked and stretched? Trimmed? Pressed? Unless you listen to Good Old Uncle Gilbert and insist on purchasing nothing but the best: low grade cards.

You see with genuine low grade cards, none of these "problems" exist; well, in part because these things are not problems. And what's even better, low grade cards are so inexpensive that you can save enough money putting the Monster together that you may actually be able to afford one or more of the big 3, 4, 5, 6 - whatever you consider big.

So be wise, enjoy the hobby, and buy beaters!

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Posted By: Dave

I tried using the border size to determine the card size. I used Bender, pitching, trees in background as my reference card. I was also using scans done at 2x, 200 dpi, which is about 500 kB per picture (very high resolution). I did this on my computer screen with an engraved steel engineering ruler, so the measurements are good but lucky to be within .02 inches.

Using this I came up with nominal size of the border as 1.261 by 2.401 inches. I then used this as a yardstick against Tris Speaker, and came up with a card size of 1.422 x 2.615. The actual size of this card is 1.437 x 2.630. So, I was off by about 0.015 in each dimension, low in each case.

I actually think this is good given that there are 4 measurments involved in each computation, and each could have been off this much.

I wouldn't use the border values here as the gospel; to do this right needs optical magnificaion on real cards and a more accurate ruler, like the calipers. And, multiple cards to validate unformity. But, I think shows it is possible to use.

Trying this on low res scans really would be useless.

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Posted By: Eric B

I got this pic from wikipedia.