General Forum

Last week I bought a 3000 box that had a good amount of 1973 topps baseball. These were the very first cards I bought and opened when I was a kid. The thing is I dont remember any cards with one side having a rough cut but there are a lot in the box I bought. The cardstock also seems to be a bit thin.

Doing a search on the net seems to say the rough edge does not affect the value. Any input? This seems really odd to me.

The rough cut usually means the sheets were cut by wire.  Wire cut is usually found on O-Pee-Chee cards. Maybe Topps had some cards printed in the OPC facilities.

1973 was the first year I bought Topps baseball packs, too.  You have to remember they were doing millions of cards over the course of the print run- some were bound to be less-than-perfect.  I would probably say that if the sides are noticeably rough cut, you would have a harder time getting someone to buy them, hence hurting the value.

And good luck finding perfectly centered 1973 Topps.  The photo, along with its black border, takes up 2 inches.  That means a perfectly centered card would have a quarter-inch on both sides.

Thinner cardstock and rough cut...are you sure they aren't O-Pee-Chee versions? Both of those characteristics are known to be associated with OPC.

I have with rough cut edges in this year and others in 70s

my opinion is to drop them to grade vgex if there are no other issues that would lower it to a vg.

vgex usually are around 30-35% of nm book value

mark