Completely agree. It also makes me wary of unusually light prints, because it can be hard to tell whether the card was genuinely printed that way or has faded slightly over time. Sometimes it looks different, but not obviously sun-faded enough to be certain. How do you judge that?
A creased card is a destroyed card as far as I’m concerned. I own at least three creased holos; a Base Venu, Base 2 Charbar and 1st ed Neo Discovery Tyranitar. They’ve been bothering me for 20+ years. All of them were trade tokens.
1: heavy scratching on the art or foiling. this is easily the biggest for me.
2: crease
3: super off centered cards bug me a bit
4: bad print line, although this is super rare
i guess sun fading can be rough but i never really see this either
In the past I would get anything, didn’t care what condition.
But these days, the ones that bother me the most in order are:
Off-centered: OC cards defintely bothers me the most. For my FA Supporter/CHR collection, I sometimes don’t mind paying 25 USD more for a well-centered copy in comparison to an off-centered one. And I also plan on replacing the few off-centered Pikachu cards I already have with well-centered ones eventually.
Ink dots: I consider even a very small ink dot as a minor misprint, so I don’t want to see any ink dot in my main collection. There is still one Pikachu card with red ink dot I plan on replacing.
Big print lines: These I don’t mind as much as the previous two, but if I see a print line in the pictures of a well-centered copy, I usually still scroll further down. But it also depends on how wide the print line is tbf.
Holo bleed: Likewise as no. 2, I see holo bleed as minor errors, and prefer to replace them. Unfortunately, 90% of all modern cards have holo bleeds, and some cards I have yet to even see a single copy without holo bleed, so there isn’t an option to replace it with.. Therefore I’m less bothered by it, I guess.
Creases: For my Pikachu and Seviper collection it doesn’t bother me too much. I’ve got a few cards with creases, and don’t really plan on replacing them. For my FA Supporter/CHR collection on the other hand, I prefer everything NM. I’ve had two arrive creased/folded due to bad packaging, and one I accidently folded myself after taking it out of the toploader , so all three of those I immediately replaced and the damaged copies were put in my duplicated box.
Sun-discoloration: I do like the look of sun-discoloration on some cards, but I would never put such cards in my main collection. I don’t consider them errors like ink dots or holo bleeds, but I’d still put any sun-discolored cards separated from my main collection.
Unfortunately, the two off-centered Pikachu cards and one Pikachu card with ink dot I still want to replace are about 1k USD in value in total rn (roughly 125; 300; and 650 USD on average..).
The rest doesn’t bother me too much, and I usually simply ignore:
whitening at edges/corners on the back
minor silvering on the front
(in)dents, except for my preferably NM FA Supporter/CHR collection
(holo) scratches
for much darker/lighter colors, I’ll see if regular colored copies are available to replace them with, otherwise it can’t be helped (e.g. Italian Crimson Invasion RH Pikachu are all very dark, without lighter version available; I do have both a light and dark version of the English Crimson Invasion Pikachu, though);
Alterations bother me much more than damage. I think it’s my number one dealbreaker. For very rare or very expensive cards, I think I would accept any kind of damage so long as the card wasn’t altered.
When thinking about what bothers me most for normal cards, I think it would be:
Completely agree that sun fading is a no-go, but how do you reliably distinguish gradual fading from a naturally light print?
Severe fading is obvious when specific pigments are visibly bleached, but mild UV damage may simply reduce the overall colour intensity. Photos and scans make this even harder because lighting, exposure, scanner settings, colour correction and added saturation can significantly alter the appearance.
Looking at the scans above, I honestly wouldn’t feel confident distinguishing sun fading from normal print variation or scanning differences. How do you handle this when buying cards online?
I’ve always avoided holo scratching first because it detracts from the art, which is kind of the whole point of the card. I’ve softened over time on this though because I’ve realized that binder page scuffing kind of makes it hard to notice really light scratches since even on completely clean cards the scuffing makes it look like there’s a few light spots.
I suppose a heavy crease down the art would do the same thing but it’d be pretty rare to have a clean holo with a crease that egregious. I have a shining mewtwo that looks great except for a light crease in the upper left corner that I didn’t catch till it arrived and honestly I don’t even notice it anymore unless I look for it.
, so all three of those I immediately replaced and the damaged copies were put in my duplicated box.
