Centering question

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Posted By: lentel

How is a determination on a cards centering made. I can tell if a card if off a bit left to right or top to bottom but how are the numbers assigned. How can one say a card is 55/45 or 60/40 or 58/42, is some device used or just eyeballed. Any help to clear this up for me would be appreciated
thanks

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Posted By: slacks

You can get a loupe or fixed lens that shows markings when you look through it -- it completely takes away the guesswork.

Or, and this is nicked from Beckett's web site:

There are a handful of tools on the market to quickly judge a card's centering, but the most common method uses a ruler and calculator. It doesn't matter whether you measure in picas, decimals, points or any other scale, as long as you use a very finely marked ruler. Measure both sides of a border, and write the numbers down. Let's say the left side measured 12 and the right side measured 5. Add the numbers together (for a total of 17), and divide either of the first two measurements by this total. In the sample case, 12 divided by 17 equals approximately 0.70. The left-right centering on this card is therefore 70/30.

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Posted By: lentel

Great, Thanks that cleared up a long standing misunderstanding of mine
Appreciate it

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Posted By: Dave

A quick way to estimate centering is to eyeball the two sides and guess when one is 2x or 3x or 4x the other. If one side were twice the other, then the ratios are 33/67, which is very close to 30/70.

Here's the values:

2x: 33/67
3x: 25/75
4x: 20/80

A measurement will always be better than a guess, but it is amazing how good you can get with your eye if you practice on a handful of cards that you measure first.

I've used my photo processor to measure this as well from a scan. I crop the picture to the width of one border, and do save as. Under jpg options, there is a bit count; it will tell you how many pixels wide the border is. Cancel out, and do the same for the other side.

Dave

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

that have no top border, like the W 504 and the '54 Topps!