How Important Is The Back Of The Card?

PSA 10 requires 75/25 on the reverse but any grade lower only requires 90/10. I've always wanted to "beat up" a card with 95/5 reverse centering and submit it to see if I get a PSA 1 OC.

Personally, I don't care about the back as much as the front, but I don't particularly care for a PSA 9 that has 90/10 reverse centering, regardless of the characteristics of the front. I have some candidates for upgrades based on this alone. I also have 9's that have 50/50 front and back centering that I can't figure out why they are not 10's. I submitted one about a year ago that I was sure would pull a 10 - perfect centering front and back, razor sharp corners - it came back an 8. It was a high pop common (20+ in PSA 8 with 1 or 2 10's at the time) so I didn't bother resubmitting it. I looked at it for a while and couldn't figure out what downgraded it to a 9 let alone an 8. Oh well.

JEB.

Smelly - I'll supply the corked bat if you wish to beat this dead horse any longer.

As to the original question - Have a 1961 Topps Jim Brown that I submitted to PSA,
came back an 8 MC. I'm thinking WTF, the centering is nearly 50/50 l/r and t/b.

Turn it over and take out the magnifier, and sure enough,
the back of the card is missing 1/10,000 of its border on one corner.
Oh well ... rules is rules ...

While admittedly the back of the card Centering
is not as important as the front of the card,
ANY Staining, Front or Back, will count off the grade
the same (or result in the dreaded Qualifiers; ST or MK)

The back is 1/2 of the card.I will not buy cards that have bad backs unless there is not a better one available.
BOTN's input would be nice.

Vic


PS,

I like riding a dead horse,After you get tired of riding em,you can always eat em.

Honestly I could almost care less about the back of a card. The only thing I try to avoid is gum stains and miscut backs. 90/10 on the back doesn't bother me at all. I'd rather have a 9 with a gorgeous front and 99/1 back than a PSA 8 with a pretty nice front and back. Front is everything to me.

Whenever I look for raw 1965's (the set I know most about)....I start by looking at the backs first. If the backs look pretty clean then I check out the front. The blue backs of the 65's make it a lot easier to go through cards the first time around and are much easier to see defects (corner wear, etc)...thent he white boarded fronts.

John

With 1955 Bowman, I honestly do not care much about the back of the card, as long as it is not miscut or have significant staining. It is so hard to find nice cards that are worthy of PSA 8 or PSA 9 -- that I think downgrading a card simply because of the reverse centering is a bit over the top -- especially with an issue that has a significant amount of front/back card alignments. Also -- for what it is worth, I have found that historically PSA has been somewhat inconsistent with their grading of PSA 8 and PSA 9 examples from this set as it relates to back centering. I have seen (and have no problems owning) numerous examples of high-grade unqualified cards that are clearly miscut on the reverse.

MS

I wonder if the back of this card is important?