Quote:
Originally Posted by UKCardGuy
+1
For me it about balance. Sharp corners and a good surface are first. Then centering. It also depends how bad the centering is. I can handle 70/30 but 90/10 probably not.
|
I'm with you. Centering is important, but not sure I'm on board with it being exponentially more important than every other aspect of condition that hobbyists have been judging for decades now. I've been known to occasionally keep a worse centered card with nicer corners and better color over a perfectly centered one with lesser attributes elsewhere. The last time I recall that definitely happening was with my '73 Schmidt RC.
In general, I can tolerate mild OC simply because it was so prevalent in cards that came out of postwar packs in the 1980's and before. 70/30 one way usually doesn't bother me. If I have to look at a card twice to determine whether or not it's miscut - that and things like 90/10 centering or "sliver" borders - usually do bother me.
On the whole I kind of chuckle at the centering craze that has enveloped the hobby post year 2000 or so. It's really just cognitive bias. I don't recall anyone at Topps ever coming out and saying that the "perfect" Topps baseball card had to be cut perfectly centered. Why do we believe this today? Because of hobbyists (and ahem, graders...) drumming that into us at every opportunity for the past 20 or 25 years, probably. Yes, a well centered card is a thing of beauty, I won't deny that. But just because that is true does not mean that a mildly OC card is inherently ugly / a pure factory reject from the word go, owing only to our modern day biases.