What bothers you most about the condition of a card?

[TNP777]

Centering for me as well. I'm a huge fan of well loved vintage, so soft/rounded corners, major creases, missing paper, tack holes, tape, rips, pen marks (team changes, moustache & beard additions) - all that stuff is fine. Horribly centered cards are something else entirely - hate those things. I've got a lot of them in my collection, and I'll take the time someday to upgrade them, even if that means the replacement is in worse overall condition.

We should have a contest for most well loved card. I'll always cherish my Valmy Thomas card:

 

[ral72]

Centering is always #1; it's the biggest factor in the first impression of the card. Even if it's well-centered and has dinged corners, it still has good eye appeal. If it's off-center but has nice corners, it just doesn't look as nice.

Being a graded collector of some of my childhood card years, I'd have to say that my biggest gripe is with Topps from the mid-70's up through the early 80's...The "snow" effect. For some reason, several of the cards from this era are very difficult to find in mint or better condition due to the surface appearing to have snow on it (a bunch of little white print dots). Hard to describe and see in a scan, but if you collect that stuff, you'll know what I'm talking about.

 

[predatorkj]

Off centered and surface damage. Surface damage isn't too bad as long as its not on chrome or foil surface. If its on one of those...you can hang it up. Its one reason I like to keep chrome cards in penny sleeves. To do otherwise is pure death for the cards IMO.

 

[JoshHamilton]

If it's defaced with a Topps logo on the front of the card

 

[G $MONEY$]

creases, then corners, then centering, in that order for my top 3.

 

[Superfractor]

Creases and corners are tops for me, as they can affect the card's integrity. Surface damage comes next. This is most amplified in Chrome. Centering isn't too much of an issue, since I don't grade, but I do consider that bad feature a nuisance.

 

[predatorkj]

Centering.

New cards are almost always perfect anyway, so this is in reference to vintage for me.

Honestly...with a card that you can't notice on...like a full bleed card...its not an issue for newer stuff. But I have noticed on some sets...they are very prone to be off centered. Some worse than others. Bowman is really bad about this IMO. I can't believe how badly centered some of them are. And...I think it was 2008 Topps opening day...they were horrible. It seemed that every single card I got out of every single pack was off centered. Hell...I finished my set on sportslots and even ended up rebuying a few of the cards because they were so poor on centering. Yeah its just opening day but come on!

Another thing I forgot to mention is the indented crease like problem UD had a year or so ago. It was really prominent on the Base series and also on the UD X stuff. Didn't matter if you purchased hobby or retail as I did both. Also got many similar cards from sellers on sportslots. Whatever the problem was...it sucked!