Should a 75 topps baseball card be exactly 3 1/2" top to bottom?

Darin

I just bought one in an SGC holder, and I noticed the card doesn't touch the black border at the top or bottom, so I measured it and its almost 1/16" short of 3 1/2". Should there be that much tolerance? I measured several of my other 75's, and all are right at 3 1/2". Its exactly 2 1/2" from side to side.

Its card #540, Lou Brock.

MuckyMutt

I just randomly choose 10 of mine and measured them all at exactly 3 1/2 inches.

Dallas88

....I pulled a few also - none of mine were short.

But isn't there a 1/16" tolerance, or something.......or did I just dream that?

digicat

I've got a 1962 Topps card that's 1/16th of an inch short l/r. It's sitting in a PSA holder too. I don't know what this means, other than sometimes the cards come out short.

Stone193

I had called PSA a few years ago on this subject and a grader informed me that they allow 1/32" and no more.

So, can a card be 1/16" off and not be trimmed? IMO, yes. But, PSA will reject the card as undersized rather than trimmed and give you a vouchure.

The incredulous would say that PSA would automatically mark these as trimmed to avoid giving one a vouchure. That's for another Jerry Springer Show.

mike

cardinarky

Having worked for 35 years in QA labs, and being constantly involved with ASTM, SAE, and ISO specificaons until I lost my mind and went blind, for cutting materials, there are +,- tolerances.
Usually the tolerance is for a + and no acceptance for anything short.
But in the card manufacturing process, eventually there will be a short. It would be interesting to see what tolerance specifications PSA or the other grading systems work to. I personally would not think that 1/16" short would be impossible to have happen on the production line. But for a graded card, the limit allowed to be undersize would be nice to know.
Here are the PSA criterion for grading, N6 is what you are interested in, but it gives no actual statement of acceptability.

http://www.psacard.com/grading/grading_standards.chtml

Darin

Thanks everyone for the reponses. Last night I checked almost 400 of my 75 topps cards, didn't find any short ones but found several long ones, up to 1/16" too long. So it stands to reason, if they cut a section of a sheet too long, then one of the sections of the same sheet would have to be cut too short. One thing about the long ones though, you can pretty much tell by looking at them that they're long, as all of them have too much extra cardboard at the top, above the team name. The Lou Brock card I bought that's short, you can't tell by looking. Its perfectly centered, perfectly proportioned. I'll call SGC next week and see what the tolerances are.