Condition Question

lahmejoon

Hi All,

I recently had the opportunity to review a 1971 Topps baseball set. One thing I noticed is that some of the cards appeared to have been stored in an album using corner tabs, which has caused a slight indentation into the surface of the card where the corner would have been underneath the tab. The affected cards are only slightly noticeable, but you can definitely see it upon closer review.

The question - what affect would this attribute have on a card that was otherwise in NM condition?

Thanks in advance for your help!

gemint

Yes, chances are if you can notice the indentation, the grader will dock for it. Probably they would get no better than a 5 or 6. In fact, Lionel Carter had a beautiful 1952 set that was NM or better except for the photo album tab indentations on the backs of most of the cards. Mastro didn't estimate the condition taking it into account but its clear that the value was significantly affected vs a true EX-MT to NM-MT set.

1952 Set

lahmejoon

That makes sense. So, the expectation would be that it would probably affect the grade by 1 to 2 grades?

There are cards in this set I could use for my own set that don't have these marks. There are also cards that are EXMT that would be borderline for my set. Some of those that are in EXMT have the corner marks as well, so I wouldn't use those. If a 7 would yield a 5 and a 6 would yield a 4, then that helps me immensely determine whether or not I even want to bother throwing out an offer.

Thanks!