71 Collecting and Issues on NM Cards
 

I am new to the forum. I collect 6 sets between 1956 topps and 1972 topps, but my 1971 set is one of my favorites. I previously collected a full set and sold it 6 years ago, and my current set is about halfway complete and I don't collect anything worse than PSA 5 or thereabouts for my personal set, of course with many of the cards being much better than that. In buying 1971 lots there have now been multiple times I have purchased weird looking 1971 cards. These cards appear NM or close, they have edges that seem unnaturally straight to me from my experience handling 71s, and the top of the card is almost uniformly shorter than most of my cards. In other words, the black space above the "White Sox" on the John Purdin I recently purchased is very short. When you align the bottoms of a stack of these cards, the tops appear different lengths, in other words you stack 25 cards, you hold them and the bottoms of the cards are all touching your fingers, and the tops of the cards appear "rough" on top because of being slightly different lengths. I sent back a full 200 dollar shipment a month ago and told the seller no hard feelings but that it might be factory error, but I simply was not interested in 30 1971 "factory miscuts". Can someone with even more experience than me shed some light? I understand that trimming is an issue in this year, but the more I look for this the more I find. And it does not seem simple, some of these cards appear short but then you find they are the same length as graded copies at least to the naked eye... and I am not referring to "maraca" cards that shake around in the psa holder. I have one of those as well. Any info or any experiences others have had collecting 1971 would be so much appreciated.

Not an expert of this year, but this was one of the years Topps made uncut sheets available to the general public, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of sheet cut 1971's floating out there.

Bought heavy in 70, 71 and 72 and every once in a while you got a card slightly taller than the rest in the pack. But it was infrequent.

I have no hard facts or anything of that nature, but that set is the poster child for alteration. Whether it's the 'Charcoal Merchants' (as I call them) blacking the cards out, or card doctors cutting away the white, to be safe I would unhesitatingly consider any 'short' card that I encounter to be altered. You may be wrong here and there, but you'll certainly be better off in the end by avoiding all of that bad cardboard.

I've been collecting 1971s since, well, 1971, and there are a lot of trimmed cards out there.

Adding to my post
 

I should have said this initially. I am getting whole lots of mostly "short" cards from 100% feedback sellers on ebay. That's the tough thing. I have had success from a few people. TheVintageGuy out of Ohio has sent me nice cards, so that's one seller I trust. But yeah it's tough out here in these 1971 streets on ebay. I bought 20 short print high numbers in high grade, and every one has a weird short edge, mostly top edge. It sucks. I went back today after getting feedback and looked closely at the long description from the seller. Seller says "claimed grade (NM in these cases) does not refer to any marks that may be on backs of card or CARD SIZE". So he must know? It makes me want to give negative feedback, but I have never done that before. I probably won't.

Yeah, that sounds suspicious. I mean the seller made a disclosure, sure, but it's just a more sophisticated version of those sellers that found a 51 Mays in the old lady next door's attic, looks real to them but buyer must decide for himself...without ever actually seeing or handling the card in person.

Anyway, are you still looking? And how tight are you condition? I have a pretty nice 71 set I'm thinking of breaking up. Most of the cards were bought raw as "NM" but many are not. One thing I can say for sure is the none of the cards have been altered...all bought from original collectors. If any are short, they were packed that way. Anyway, if you're looking, I could pull out the high numbers and check condition. If not, no biggie.

Cheers!

There was a previous discussion regarding cards that came out of the vending boxes that were found to be slightly shorter than those that came from retail packs. Could that be true of the 71s?

Phil aka Tere 1071

Working on my 71 Topps Baseball set
(13 needed to complete)

Because the opinion sellers from their very first opinion have shown themselves to be experts in their field...

Doug "in case you didn't notice, this post is meant as sarcasm" Goodman

I think you may be referring to a question I had last fall about a few cards that I bought. They were indeed 71s and 72s, and I got comfortable that they were factory cuts - but they were a bit narrow, not short.

My guess would be that a lot of short yet very straight-edged cards would be from vending.

Something else to keep in mind. If you send cards away to be graded, the short ones might shoot you in the foot, even if they actually came out of the factory that way. In one of the fairly recent group subs, I sent out nine 1971s. These are cards that I've had since the late 80's, early 90's, and never had even an inkling that they were doctored in the past. One third (3) of them came back ungraded with this assessment - "N6: MINIMUM SIZE REQUIREMENT." It is very possible that they were nothing more than simply 'factory short.' Bummer.

Yep. PSA is willy nilly random on this kind of thing. N6 supposedly means they don't think the card is trimmed, but yet it does not meet the size requirement. So they are acknowledging by that the cut is factory, but yet they still won't grade it. To me this is the epitome of third party grading bull$hit. Either a card is altered, or it's not. But yet for years they have insisted on this gray area as part of the process. I know many collectors who have submitted the same card multiple times. One time it may be N6, the next time it's trimmed / altered, and the time after that it gets a PSA 6. If you think these guys know more about vintage cards than you do if you've been collecting for decades, then you are being extremely generous. Just my 2 cents. #RantOver.