Borders, an opinion

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Posted By: identify7

With several obvious exceptions, the (typically white)borders on baseball cards are not a decorative element, in my opinion. I consider them a functional accomodation, included to protect the picture portion of the card.

In operation, cards are frequently encountered with worn, rounded, trimmed, chipped, nicked, off center, and otherwise imperfect borders. In these instances, the border has served its design function: protect the picture.

Although it is true that the first evidence of wear on a card is usually shown by deterioration of its borders; I think that downgrading the card due to this wear is not appropriate.

By comparison, stains, scuffing, and other problems which affect the picture portion of the card are far more serious than border deterioration

In my opinion, many cards would look best if once their circulation days are over, the cards were trimmed to eliminate borders, then encapsulated as Authentic.

Am I alone in this opinion?

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Posted By: dennis

never look at it this way,but i think you might be alone on those thoughts.

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Posted By: David Vargha

Alone? Probably not. There is usually at least another person in the world who shares someone else's opinion on a subject, no matter how bizarre. I was kinda with you up to the trimming part.

DavidVargha@hotmail.com

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Posted By: leon

I wouldn't trim a card even though it might have a better look to it..

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Posted By: joe brennan

Seriously never thought of it. A point can be made that I'd rather have rounded corners that a crease through the portrait. But as far as altering a card in that way, I'm not sure I follow you there. Even a white border with rounded corners is much more attractive than T206's that have been trimmed of the border. I've seen some beaters trimmed like that and they are down right ugly. Just my 2 cents .Out

"I had the right to remain silent. I just didn't have the ability" Ron White

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Posted By: Dave H

nothing compares to a crisp clean sharp white bordered T206

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Posted By: ItsOnlyGil

I sorta thought that including trimming cards as a final way to finish off their life was going a bit far. Particularly since trimming has gotten a bad reputation due to deceptive trimming practises.

Although I would not actually alter a card unless it was structurally necessary, I have seen several cards which have had their borders removed (the rough drawn w- cards, for example) and they look improved. Ive also seen some t206s with crystalline white even borders which sparkled. And some OJs with big bold borders which seemed to show off the picture.

Thank you for your input regarding borders. I am happy that others can also see them as the frame on a picture - sometimes important, sometimes not.

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Posted By: Chris Counts

I've always thought that trimmed cards are underrated. I feel the same way about cards with tape stains (which usually have better than average corners, by the way), and I don't mind off-centered cards as well, which you can often pick up for 25-50% of the price of a well-centered card. Hairline creases will sink a cards value, so I look for them as well. I figure I'm far from perfect, so why should I expect perfection from my cards? I like to say my goal as a collector is to find "perfectly flawed cards."

Amazingly, I recently bought some "trimmed" Diamond Stars off eBay. I paid about $4 a card. When I measured them, they looked okay, but the corners seemed too sharp to be legit. So I took three of my dupes to the San Jose card show two weeks ago and showed them to a grader from GAI. He said one might be trimmed, but the other two were definitely untrimmed. He pregraded one a "7" and the other only a "4.5" due to bad centering (he said its corners were worthy of a "8"). Since I could never imagine myself paying a premium for even a "6," I traded away the two cards before they were even encapsulated, and I walked away with a bunch of nice but flawed cards.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Yes.

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Posted By: DJ

Wow!

The Mona Lisa in France isn't looking so good so let's crop her to the size of an original 1953 Topps painting?

While it's not criminal, I simply couldn't sleep at night if I knew that I had just purposely cut off the wear on a T206 card.

The card was born almost 100 years ago and I'm not quite killing the card, but I am chopping off a few fingers.

(shivering a tad with fright)

DJ

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Posted By: Matthew

Don't know that I would advocate trimming any cards now, but I have a ton of cards that have had the top & side borders removed long ago. I will admit they don't hold value to a large number of collectors but I have no problem with them since I could not afford some of them in better conditions.

The image on this card is perfectly clean & has almost every bit of gloss that it probably had when new. I suspect that about 94 years ago the owner of this card felt the same way as the original poster & trimmed it then put this one away for posterity. So what should we do with it, destroy it? While I am not going to do anything like this to my cards I have now, anyone with cards like this that thinks they are worthless, send 'em on to me.

Everyone here has different collecting interests so I don't expect everyone will have the same opinion on this either.

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Posted By: Julie