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.
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