Card Damage

Let's see how many different ways cards have been damaged. (good old fashion wear, scissors, not sure, spills, won't ever has happened to make a card damaged)

Let's try not to repeat, show one card at a time until there is another response.

I'll start with staples:



Lee

This is too big to be a pin hole. Nail hole?

Lots of honest wear.

One of my favorites, Bingo Blotter?

Bespeckled...

Rat nibbled:

The ultimate die cut

third party graders (sgc) I was told it happend when they shoot air to free up any dust the card was vary frail.. it was a cross over from a psa2

Take your pick of issues with this one!

My Beautiful Shellacked card:



Lee

Not sure what happened to this guy

E107s look pretty well represented in this thread. Might as well pile on and add another.

I'll go with the unintentional clip at the bottom left for the damage on this one and let somebody else use "paper loss". I'll differentiate this type of damage from that where trimming was done to try to improve a card's appearance.

In agreement and keeping with the e107 theme...and breaking from Lee's rule...sorry...here are my 2 e107's. It's evidenced some cards appear to have similar damage thus most likely emanating from the same origins...the Garvin has been spaid punched...and the davis was torn from a nail and has evidence of penicillin adhered to the front...which lends credence that this card is most certainly originally from the Sir Alexander Fleming collection.

Additionally...the Davis is by far in the worst condition I have allowed in my collection...they're that tough!

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I wonder if the Harper and Davis come from the same collection. They have similar writing and damage.

I would presume so, Jay.

Why are E107s almost universally in such poor condition compared to other sets of the era?

8 sharp corners & glue:



Lee

BigGuy219 wrote:Why are E107s almost universally in such poor condition compared to other sets of the era?

A couple notes on that... They were distributed with caramels, so they had a better chance of ending up in a kid's pocket than in dad's cigar box like the tobacco cards. This likely would have been the first set that was marketed in a product where kids would get them first. No other cards were being issues around that time, so collecting hysteria hadn't taken hold - making them less known. They also probably weren't as widely distributed as the later tobacco cards (many more cigarettes sold than caramels). So, their caramel products didn't have the reach (and addiction) driving their distribution.

That somewhat speaks to their reduced numbers, and thereby, their surviving scarcity. As for their condition, when less survive, it is just the odds game to see what kind of condition they are in. One partial set that survived commonly shows initials "EM" and the date of 1903 written vertically on the front, along with some sort of growth, and a large hole at the top - likely from a nail or some other methods of attachment. Many of them have been torn at the top (ripping the hole out). Was this from mom tearing them off the wall because she was sick of looking at them? Who knows. The cards from that "find" are all pretty easily identifyable though. There are cards from the E107 that have survived in much nicer condition (including one partial / near set that in approximately EX condition), but that is by far the exception instead of the rule.

Here is my example from that find.