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Posted By: Julie

Even if the back is not rare and worth a premium on that particular card, grading companies (and I think most of us, too) think that seriuous back damage to a deadballera card brings the value way down. I had a T206 Griffith portrait posted on my website--common back--Piedmont, I think, and decided I had to get rid of some T206s, because I was running out of space. Although the card has a great front and sharp corners, it was the first card I thought of removing, because there was a 1 1/2 inch of missing Piedmont back, where a piece of tape had been removed.

As for blank-baked cards, I agree with a great collector named Buck Barker--a blank back is a great place to store information about the player, be it a Zeenut or a N172. Grading companies, and many collectors, however, disagree with me (Masatro, I notice, makes no distinction between N172s with marked backs and those with unmarked backs--ungraded, or course). Some backs are treasured by some of us because a famous collectior wrote career details on them--but I have a N172 Smiling Mickey Welch, with his w-l record scrawled all over the back in fountain pen, which I find particularly interesting, because it doesn't quite match his record in the Baseball Encyclopedia, and it wasn't written by anyone famous, either.

However, you'll find, when itr comes to grading, even completely blank-backed cards (no color of any kind)--the grading companies do not go easy on them.