I have a fondness for the Hostess baseball cards during the years 1977-79, mostly because my mother was very supportive and purchased said product (Ding Dongs, Cup Cakes, etc.) for the three panel baseball cards on the back. I would always search for boxes that contained Padres players, and in the case of Twinkies (which I never liked), I would force myself to eat them for the cards.
I've noticed a few things, mostly on eBay, about the Hostess cards:
1. They are fairly inexpensive
2. Seemingly there is a desire more for the back panel that contains three uncut cards. So, do collectors generally cut them out themselves once they've obtained an uncut panel, or leave them on the panel intact?
2. The fact that they were designed to be cut out from the bottom of the product box is a quandary to me. I don't collect graded cards, but I have noticed that PSA grades the Hostess cards as "Hand Cut" and assigns them a "regular" PSA numerical grade (6, 7, 8, etc.) and condition. In the same vein, I have seen other cards (pre-war, post-war) cut from packages or product (non-Hostess) graded as "Authentic" because they had been cut. This is kind of confusing for me.
Heck, when I was a kid, I would carefully cut out the cards just outside the dotted lines (so that the dotted lines could be slightly seen all the way around). That was my preference for my cards; yet I see some graded cards that have been cut out on the lines, just inside the lines, etc., and it does not seem to affect the grade one way or the other.
So, for Hostess collectors, what's the general consensus or "rule" regarding cutting the cards, etc.?
Thanks!