Thanks for the responses guys. The scans you see came directly from the auction websites, and I do not believe they were re-sized much if at all coming through to net54. Here are the auction links:
http://www.goodwinandco.com/LotDetai...entoryid=24412
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1916-M101-4-...p2047675.l2557
Bill you raise an interesting point. Could you see what you perceive to be the wrinkle without taking the various photoshop steps you took? When buying higher dollar (or any)cards should one expect to subject the card to such types of scrutiny?
Do you others who see the wrinkle on the Altoona Tribune concur it is where Bill says, and if so, did you find it on your own or did you focus in on the spot Bill identified?
I agree wholeheartedly that if cards look nicer than you should expect for the grade, there is probably a slight defect. The Successful Farming card is so scarce that I really didn’t care too much, although I hoped they may have marked it down for the speck of paper loss on the “A” in “Iowa”, because I knew that is not paper loss at all but instead an inking problem–I will show other examples. I suppose I could have called Mr. Goodwin, but frankly I wanted to keep the Baker off his radar because his listing failed to mention that this was the ultra-scarce promo card and I didn’t know if he would modify the listing or pull the card (shameful of me).
I saw that the Altoona Tribune Baker has light damage along the right edge–many of them do, as if there was a dull blade or something that leads to slight chipping or bending in that area. Moreover, 90% of Altoona Tribune cards have faint pressure lines, sometimes extremely faint, which invariably knocks them down to vg or vg-ex status (only 2 in the entire set are graded higher than vg-ex). This is what I attributed to the card getting the grade it received. I just did not expect the wrinkle. BTW, I’m not sure whether Bill got it right because the actual wrinkle is IMO more aligned with Baker’s thigh, and he may have seen what is at most a light scratch below that point and closer to the knee area.
I will post my scans in a little while, just in case someone else wants to chime in.