How long have cards been trimmed?

[Chris Counts]

I was just looking at a 1933 Tattoo Orbit card I have of Lefty Grove. It's graded "A" and it's from the Lionel Carter collection. It's clearly trimmed ...

According to his biography, Lionel started collecting in 1933 in Illinois. The first pack he bought contained 1933 Delongs. So the way I figure it, as devoted as he soon became to collecting, he probably finished the 1933 Tattoo Orbit set early on, especially since its distribution seemed to be focused in the Midwest. So what was Lionel doing with a trimmed card? I'm sure he could have acquired it late in life, but just as likely, it was in his collection for many decades ...

It's hard for me to imagine that trimmed cards existed even in the 1970s since there was hardly anybody I recall from that era that really cared about perfectly sharp corners. Any thoughts? Are trimmed cards a product of the slabbed card era? Or have dealers and collectors always sought to "improve" cards?

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Chris Counts

It's hard for me to imagine that trimmed cards existed even in the 1970s since there was hardly anybody I recall from that era that really cared about perfectly sharp corners. Any thoughts? Are trimmed cards a product of the slabbed card era? Or have dealers and collectors always sought to "improve" cards?

Cards were 'trimmed' well before the grade mattered - kids would cut them for any number of reasons - to fit into an album, to have them be the same size as other cards or because they didn't think the borders were of any import.

[FrankWakefield]

113 years, or thereabouts.


Seems to me the first cards to be trimmed were Old Judge cards, where folks wanted to remove the brand name in an attempt to minimize the likelihood that young collectors would turn to smoking cigarettes.

If that 'how long' doesn't suit, how about 102 years. That would be about when collectors of ballcards would trim down American Caramel cards just a bit, so they would be the same size as the white border tobacco cards.

[Leon]

I think cards have been trimmed for at least 140 yrs.....I have seen many of the 1869 Peck and Snyders that are trimmed, for one reason or another. Back in the very early days of collecting they didn't really care....It was fun and the money wasn't too much of the equation....

[Peter_Spaeth]

Perhaps what the question is getting at is how long have cards been trimmed with deceptive intent.

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Perhaps what the question is getting at is how long have cards been trimmed with deceptive intent.

I witnessed card doctoring - with Deceptive Intent - as early as 1978-79, which is about the same time I resumed collecting after doing so as a young 'un from 1968-1972.

When I started attending card shows in the early 1980s, I always brought along one of those old clear card measurers, as trimming was already a common concern.

I knew a Pennsylvania card shop owner in the mid-1980s who hired a local kid to sit in the shop's back room and color touch the edges and corners of the owner's 1971 and 1975 Topps baseball cards. I confronted the owner about it, but he didn't think it was any big deal - he was just makin' 'em look nicer.

[HRBAKER]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Perhaps what the question is getting at is how long have cards been trimmed with deceptive intent.

For as long as any type of money has been invloved.

[fkw]

102 Years or so...

E90-1s and other slightly larger E cards were often trimmed to be the same size as T206, T205 etc.

in the 1970s when the first plastic pages came out many oldschool collectors trimmed cards so they would fit some pages.

As a kid I once got a whole shoebox collection of 1952-69 Topps cards with all of the 1952-56 Topps (about 200 cards) cut down to 2.5" by 3.5". This was in 1978.

There are different types of trimming...

[Rickyy]

Well I know it goes back at least to the 70's...when I was a kid I used to trim them especially the 71 Topps because I hated the chipped corners. Also I used to try to flatten out the corner dings and creases on my 72 - 74 cards too..it was keeping them in those darn shoe boxes! There was no intention to deceive...Just wanted my collection to look nicer...I didn't imagine they would be slabbed, graded and scrutinzed to the ninth degree and sold for mega bucks by grown ups many years later...

[FrankWakefield]

If the idea is 'how long' with intent to improve value, then what Jeff says about 'as long as any type of money has been involved' would be the answer. And cards started getting a 'bit' of value in about 1960 or so. I'd think before then, when HOF T206's sold for under a dollar, things weren't out of hand. Burdick, Carter, Orem, the old guys... they'd whine about folks paying very much at all for cards. The value of them interfered with their collecting of them. So in the 60's and 70's, when folks started getting more for the cards they sold (careful there, to avoid saying that cards were 'worth' more, cards are just cardboard), THAT would be when trimming, coloring, bleaching, and such began, with a goal of deception to get more money for a sale.

[barrysloate]

Back in the early days the 16 pocket sheets that housed tobacco cards were side loaders, so if a card was a fraction too tall it wouldn't fit. I knew of at least one collector who trimmed his tobacco cards just to fit them into the pages.

[D. Bergin]

I know dealers were already doing it to upgrade condition when I first got into cards in the 80's.

As long as I could remember you had to keep an eye out for 71's being touched up with black marker.

Hell, even the Brits got into it. I would buy lots of c. 1900's Ogden's Tab Cards (Sports & Non-Sports) directly from England......and loads of them would normally be touched up a bit. They weren't even worth much at the time, but solid black borders always seemed to make people think they were restoration experts for some reason.

[Bridwell]

In the early 1970's, condition didn't seem to matter much and the cards weren't worth much. In the late 1970's, there was a craze where values jumped radically. Dealers started applying grades to the cards, and increasing the prices of the nicest ones. By 1980, there was certainly some trimming going on, but not very much (IMO).

Slabbing the cards in the late 1980's made deceitful trimming & altering a 'get rich quick' scheme for a few cheaters. It got worse in the late 80's to early 90's. I, personally, don't collect pre-1920 cards above EX-MT because I feel that a great many could have been trimmed. That includes even professionally graded cards of NMT and better.

[brett 75]

What about the idea of cards improperly trimmed coming from the factory? You see cards all the time diamond cut , uneven border, etc. I remember getting a Ron Blomberg from a pack of 1975 Topps that was about 2/3rds of the card and no it wasn't a mini ha! ha! . In the time before the rookie card craze if a card came up a little small did they really care or would they just have shipped'em out? Quality control would it have been a big issue pre 1970's? Brett

[steve B]

Quality control wasn't an issue well into the 80's. I have a number of cards that are either oversize or undersize. The oversize ones are pretty cool, and were easy to spot in dealers boxes.

The first quality control issue I can recall was a packaging issue with 81 Donruss. Each pack had 11 of the same card and I think 4 others. The first quality control thing I can recall with the cards themselves was 88 Score. Part of the first run had poor die cutting leaving tufts of cardboard fibers sticking out but only on About the first third of the set.They replaced them with run 2 which moved the die cut gaps in about 1/4 inch from the corners still leaving tufts but in a different spot. Third time they went with a die cutting mat with no gaps. It was a big thing at the time....The second batch is actually pretty tough- at least as tough as a late 80's main set card can be

Quality control is still pretty lax. The production process has fixed some of the problems, but there's still plenty of messed up cards that get out including a few that don't meet the size.

Steve B

[drc]

There's a difference between trimming and deceptive trimming. They trimmed cards Pre-WWII, but it was closer to cutting and hacking. No one was trying to upgrade an Ex to Nrmt-Mt.

[bbcard1]

There are also gunshy graders who when in doubt throw "evidence of possible alteration" on a card and make it somebody elses problem. At least so I have heard.

[bcornell]

Trimming cards has been practiced forever, but I always associate trimming-for-profit with the late 80's and, specifically, with the Copeland Collection. His effort to collect everything in high grades as fast as possible brought out the X-acto knives.


Bill

[turtleguy64]

Taking out corner dings has seemed to have taken a strong foothold in our collecting world.How successful can this be?Is it now a science?

[wonkaticket]

Originally Posted by fkw

in the 1970s when the first plastic pages came out many oldschool collectors trimmed cards so they would fit some pages.

Frank Ward....so sad but so true... so glad this ol' timer got this one to fit those pesky sheets.