Why are corners clipped? T206 and others??

[Jobu]

I like the kid angle. Growing up with a brother 13 months apart in age I can see a kid clipping the corner of his cards to keep his sibling/friend from being able to claim them. As a kid my dad ended up engraving different marks on the tools in our child's tool boxes to end the arguing over them.

[oaks1912]

In the San Francisco region during the mid-teens to mid 30's a craze called "zeenut shooting" was part of the culture growing up, almost like pitching pennines but with baseball cards. Different techniques were used by different kids ranging from clipping corners (smooth edges do not bounce back from the walls as much as a pointed edge) to dipping the card in wax (adds weight to the paper, better control and brakes). A high percentage of Bay Area collections assembled during that era will contain cards with clipped corners. Not all of the cards will necessarily be clipped, but there are usually some. A recently acquired (Bay Area assembled) collection contained examples of E-120, E-135, E-136, T-206 and T-212 cards which had been subjected to this modification.

[mrvster]

a collector/collectors marked their cards this way??? as ownership?? had no rubber stamps

[Jaybird]

Originally Posted by oaks1912

In the San Francisco region during the mid-teens to mid 30's a craze called "zeenut shooting" was part of the culture growing up, almost like pitching pennines but with baseball cards. Different techniques were used by different kids ranging from clipping corners (smooth edges do not bounce back from the walls as much as a pointed edge) to dipping the card in wax (adds weight to the paper, better control and brakes). A high percentage of Bay Area collections assembled during that era will contain cards with clipped corners. Not all of the cards will necessarily be clipped, but there are usually some. A recently acquired (Bay Area assembled) collection contained examples of E-120, E-135, E-136, T-206 and T-212 cards which had been subjected to this modification.

Mark's got it (as usual). Likely for the card shooting game. Show us the image of the card, if you would.

[Bigdaddy]

Many photo albums of the day had mounting corners that were used to hold the photos in place. If you were to clip the corners of the cards, they would have the look of photos in a more formal photo album.

Just a guess.

[EvilKing00]

Corners get soft, sometimes fray, even creaced. They get beat up alot, id say dome people who arent collectors clip them so they look more clean.