A different take on centering

[DeanH3]

I'm still a centering snob and I don't expect that to change. Give me soft corners and centered any day.

[Popcorn]

never cared about centered cards or even the condition for the longest time

it kind of reminds me of the modern guys chasing the exact same looking card with a number or different color on it and paying astronomical amounts of money for it

[Bigdaddy]

Originally Posted by DeanH3

Give me soft corners and centered any day.

Like Dean, I'll generally take centering over soft corners, the ratio increasing rapidly the older a card is. Good registration though, is a must-have. I can't stand a blurry card. The '57 Topps seemed particularly prone to registration issues - I think it seems more noticeable on cards on which the players are full-posed, rather than a cloeseup; I guess because the details are much smaller. I also found registration hard on the some of the '62 Topps.

[JunkyJoe]

I don't mind if a card is horizontally O/C up to 90/10, especially if the lower border is the thinner one. It's the vertically O/C cards that have less eye appeal, for me anyway. Vertically 65/35 or better is no prob, but any more than that and it's a no-deal for me. As for corners and edges, I don't mind rounded corners and scuffed edges on pre-70's cards. A light crease or two, no prob. However, register/focus/surface cleanliness are huge for me. The card could be centered 50/50 with perfect corners and edges, but if the player's face is blurred or there's obvious stains or print imperfections, then the eye appeal is lost for me.

[toledo_mudhen]

Can't help it - OC disorder - quite possibly a "perfect" card?

[Throttlesteer]

I guess another interesting data point is, centering might be the hardest thing to alter on a card next to registration. Sure, you can trim a little here and there. But you cant "fix" substantially off centered cards. You can clean/bleach/recolor surfaces and trim corners.

[thatkidfromjerrymaguire]

Centering doesn't bother me too much...and lately that seems to work in my favor. Since right now I am not really concerned about the "value" of my cards, I'm able to pick up some slightly off centered HOF cards for my sets and collections for a discount compared to their perfectly centered counterparts.

Obviously, when it comes time to sell (or more likely, for my family to sell) my collection, then the return for the cards likely won't be as high as if I had perfectly centered cards. But then again, who knows? Maybe the "centering craze" will slowly fade and centered cards will no longer sell for a premium?

But for me, it turns out registration is more important to me than I realized. When I first got in to vintage a few years ago, I did start coming across (and passing on) cards that just didn't seem right. They looked "out of focus", but since the images were drawings, not photographs, then something being "out of focus" didn't make sense. It wasn't until I started reading about registration right here on Net54 that I discovered what that meant.

I can still enjoy a painting of Willie Mays if it's slightly off centered in the border...but if he appears blurry or "out of focus", it really decreases my enjoyment of the card.

It's funny that we can all agree that collecting vintage cards is awesome, but we have lots of disagreements around which card attributes are the most important.

[Leon]

Attributes of cards are a very personal thing . I am with those that say centering is numero uno but other aspects have to be there too. Big borders are a must nowadays (for me). I don't mind any damage to blank areas very much.