A different take on centering
 

Many have acknowledged the recent premiums centered cards are receiving respective to their assigned grades. However, the trend seems to be shifting where the expectation is all cards (any grade) should be centered and off-centered stuff shouldn't be touched with a 10-foot pole.

This might be a positive thing for collectors if you can find a good deal. But, it's as if folks want to hang a OC qualifier on low-grade stuff, regardless of the grading guidelines. So, we've gone from sharp corners to centering; What's the next OCD to sweep the hobby? Color? Registration?

Centering is boss. No argument here and nothing will change it or topple it from its' perch.

I don't know if it is the next "OCD" but registration has always been the most important factor for me. I'm nearly done putting together the 1953 Bowman set with an emphasis on focus and registration. It has been a nightmare to find several of the cards reasonably focused/registered. There are a few that I am convinced do not exist focused, such as Whitey Lockman (please email me if you have one to sell anyone...)

My take has always been corners, and I am a corner junkie. Having the cards I purchased as a kid (in the late 60's and early 70's), my personal preference is for the cards to be as close to the condition they were in when they came out of the pack.

Straight from the factory issues such as centering and registration have always been secondary or tertiary to me, versus willful (or unwillfull - sp? ) damage.

However, I will admit I now do look at centering and (to a lesser degree) registration when making a decent dollar purchase. I have this forum to thank for bringing these factors into my current buying habits. :)

I'm just glad us off-center people aren't judged so harshly...not to our face(s) anyway. (proper emogi inserted here ___)

Well said.

Me too. If I had multiples of a card, I would go for the best centered card and one that was in focus. If I only had an off centered one, it was fine for the set. I will gladly take a NM card with 60/40 centering over a VG one that is 50/50.

Ha. 60/40 IS centered (to me) :)

I gladly jumped on a bunch of beautiful cards recently (post-war) that were either 8's or 9's with the OC qualifier, simply because the centering wasn't bad at all (they probably came within a hair or two of not receiving the dreaded Q) and they only cost a fraction of the price of straight 8's and 9's.

I admit to readily buying a centered 5 over an OC 9 any time. It's definitely a thing that bothers me to a point of not enjoying the card as much as I would want to.

But it's not new, I have always felt that way. On the other side, I am not adverse to a soft corner here and there if I must. I actually prefer it sometimes in a prewar card to add to the look...as weird as that may sound to some.

Centering is all the rage nowadays. A nicely centered card really is nicer to look at, for me, so that is what I focus on. Not sure what all the next rage will be but hopefully it will be generic RPPCs :)... This one isn't centered too well but the hats make up for it!!

Very similar approach for me. However, since I still own the cards from when centering and registration were less important to me, what do I do with ones like this now??

Cobb looks like Leona Helmsley there. Interesting effect.

I agree. Glancing at a card centering, a mark or something marring the players face can be disqualifying. If I notice it at first glance I know it will bother me every time I look at it no matter how nice the other attributes may be.

But for a 90 year old card rounded corners can feel “appropriate” and not bother me as much. All things equal better all around is better obviously. But it is great we can all have different preferences and target different stuff.


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Cobb is sad you're making fun of him. His makeup is running.

I don't mind as long as the criteria is consistent. Plus, card fixers cannot fix the centering so probably a natural progression because of technology.

Poor centering is not a big deal to me as that is how the card(s) were packed out. Same with registration. Soft corners and creases are far less tolerable to me as those were caused by collectors, not printing machines. I'll never deal with paper loss, residue or trimming.

For me, #1 is focus/registration, #2 is centering and #3 is corners/edges.

I also agree with Prince Hal regarding 1953 Bowman. I'm working on the HOFers in the set, and have been at a standstill for months, trying to find focused and centered cards of the last seven HOFers I need.


Steve

I will agree that with so much nit-picky focus on centering over the past decade plus, it's interesting to me that registration and color issues aren't highlighted more. Last year at one point I had 2 copies of a PSA 6 1967 Topps Clemente #400. One was centered very well and had perfect color and registration. The other was centered a little worse, and the image had a very light blur effect to it; Roberto's teeth had almost a 3D quality. Putting the cards side-by-side, it was a no brainer which was the more desirable card - yet they were both PSA 6's and in the absence of a comparison - the one with the worse registration would not have anything officially "remarkable" to be said about it in an auction listing. This is difficult to understand. I can tolerate an OC card or a dinged corner for a lot longer than I can a card with overall poor registration.

For what is most important, I would say equal tie between centering, focus and printing (marks, dots, the color job). If all three aren't really good I won't even consider the card. I have too little money and there is too much nice stuff to buy a card that is little too "off" in a category. Now, about corners, they have to be simply decent for the grade. The corners kinda sorta have already been taken into account with the grade on the slab. But the grade on the slab doesn't always take into consideration the centering (60/40 vs 55/45 vs 50/50), focus, and factory slight print blips

LOL he DOES look like Lenona Helmsley...

For my money, the importance of centering will vary with the rarity and significance of the card. If it's rare and desirable enough, it will be enough to simply add almost any example to one's collection. I do believe, however, it will continue to be of prime importance with regard to most cards for the simple fact that it DOES enhance eye appeal a great deal.

Best wishes,

Larry

A different take on centering
 

Sorry for bumping an old thread. But I will 1) because it's still a relevant issue, and 2) - I think I've come to a new realization around my own tolerances for centering. Aside from a brief episode of "obsess about the grade over enjoying the card" in the early 2000's where I became hyper-focused on centering - I've never been much of a centering freak for most of my collecting career. I think I've come to realize that what I really don't like is "sliver borders" - which generally means cards worse than 80/20 up to miscut. But 75/25, or 70/30? At the end of the day, it's hard for me to have real problems with those - because back in the 1980's when old cards were generally only available at shops and shows - it was just so common that I didn't really think much about it. I owned and loved / cherished many such cards that at the time were 25, 30 years old when I was 11 or 12.

I suppose it does depend some on overall eye-appeal, and the individual card - i.e. it's hard to not wince at a card with 3 blown corners that is also egregiously O/C - but anymore a nice EX-MT card with 75/25 borders doesn't give me the pause it once did for whatever reason.

I expect the trend to be toward prizing cards with more (overall) border ahead of perfect centering. For example, two cards same grade: Card 1 is perfectly centered with medium to narrow margins all around; and Card 2 is centered a little high and right. But Card 2 has two sides that have borders very similar to Card 1 and two borders that are bigger, hence the off center. Wouldn't you suspect Card 1 is perfectly centered because it was trimmed,
making Card 2 more attractive because it wasn't?

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Centering
 

I agree that centering does and should bring a priemium. Many of the BSF E98s that were untouched for over 100 years can even be found with severe off-centering / issues. That said, a few appear to have perfect centering, corners and registration. Very rare to find pre war cards with these attributes.

Centering
 

If one of my cards is off-centered, I just move over a bit. The registry thing usually goes away after I wake up and take the bottles out to the recycling.

Maybe this is just me, but: my thing has always been that if it's a flaw that happened before it came out of a pack, like wax stains or centering or print lines, then it's less concerning to me than if it's a flaw that happened afterwards, like creasing or writing or surface wear. I'll take better centering over worse if that's the only difference, but as a general principle that's what I work with.

Interesting point. I think it will depend on the issue. For example 1967 Topps cards when perfectly centered (virtually impossible to find that also without tilt, but I digress..) are a good example of your Card 1. The white edges are a bit thinner than the garden variety vintage Topps set without a full-bleed border - compare them, say - to 1958 Topps. The borders on '58s are thicker. So with all the recent alteration / fraud hoopla - how are collectors to regard that rare, perfectly centered '67 card that might have PSA 8 or higher quality corners? I would agree with you there will likely be a lot more suspicion of trimming. In that regard - having never been a true centering freak to start with - I can live with some issues which in time to come might make a card seem more apt to be unaltered. I picked up a '67 Mantle #150 today that is sharp, but centered slightly toward the bottom and right. It's off maybe somewhere between 70/30 and 75/25 side to side. I'm over it. Time was a card like that would have bothered me, but anymore it just doesn't. Overall it's still a pretty solid EX-MT.

I borrowed this pic from another thread. I would take this Aaron card over one perfectly centered in the same condition any day of the week.:D

Centering means almost nothing to me. Just no major creases or paper loss though the players face and I am OK.

Plus 1.

For me, most important is the appearance of the image area. Clarity, surface abrasions or creases are big negatives, especially if they impact the player’s face. These same faults on the borders mean much less. To me, east-west centering is very important, north-south less so. Corners don’t mean a lot and back damage, especially on blank back cards, means virtually nothing. I’m picky on cards where I have multiple copies to choose from. On many things I collect the cards are rare and then I take what I can get and upgrade if a better copy comes along.

I'm still a centering snob and I don't expect that to change. Give me soft corners and centered any day.

never cared about centered cards or even the condition for the longest time

it kind of reminds me of the modern guys chasing the exact same looking card with a number or different color on it and paying astronomical amounts of money for it

Like Dean, I'll generally take centering over soft corners, the ratio increasing rapidly the older a card is. Good registration though, is a must-have. I can't stand a blurry card. The '57 Topps seemed particularly prone to registration issues - I think it seems more noticeable on cards on which the players are full-posed, rather than a cloeseup; I guess because the details are much smaller. I also found registration hard on the some of the '62 Topps.

I don't mind if a card is horizontally O/C up to 90/10, especially if the lower border is the thinner one. It's the vertically O/C cards that have less eye appeal, for me anyway. Vertically 65/35 or better is no prob, but any more than that and it's a no-deal for me. As for corners and edges, I don't mind rounded corners and scuffed edges on pre-70's cards. A light crease or two, no prob. However, register/focus/surface cleanliness are huge for me. The card could be centered 50/50 with perfect corners and edges, but if the player's face is blurred or there's obvious stains or print imperfections, then the eye appeal is lost for me.

Can't help it - OC disorder - quite possibly a "perfect" card?

<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/150864751@N07/48941066166/in/album-72157711330478736/" title="159 Schmitz 84 Obverse #1"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48941066166_8a1c9b7f2d_c.jpg" width="800" height="503" alt="159 Schmitz 84 Obverse #1"></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I guess another interesting data point is, centering might be the hardest thing to alter on a card next to registration. Sure, you can trim a little here and there. But you cant "fix" substantially off centered cards. You can clean/bleach/recolor surfaces and trim corners.

Centering doesn't bother me too much...and lately that seems to work in my favor. Since right now I am not really concerned about the "value" of my cards, I'm able to pick up some slightly off centered HOF cards for my sets and collections for a discount compared to their perfectly centered counterparts.

Obviously, when it comes time to sell (or more likely, for my family to sell) my collection, then the return for the cards likely won't be as high as if I had perfectly centered cards. But then again, who knows? Maybe the "centering craze" will slowly fade and centered cards will no longer sell for a premium?

But for me, it turns out registration is more important to me than I realized. When I first got in to vintage a few years ago, I did start coming across (and passing on) cards that just didn't seem right. They looked "out of focus", but since the images were drawings, not photographs, then something being "out of focus" didn't make sense. It wasn't until I started reading about registration right here on Net54 that I discovered what that meant.

I can still enjoy a painting of Willie Mays if it's slightly off centered in the border...but if he appears blurry or "out of focus", it really decreases my enjoyment of the card.

It's funny that we can all agree that collecting vintage cards is awesome, but we have lots of disagreements around which card attributes are the most important.

Attributes of cards are a very personal thing :). I am with those that say centering is numero uno but other aspects have to be there too. Big borders are a must nowadays (for me). I don't mind any damage to blank areas very much.