[user_2f51w]

Hi everyone,

I am new here and appologize in advance for the long post.

I am a child of the '80s and collected baseball cards when I was younger. I stopped collecting around 1994 and had amassed a giant box filled with thousands of commons. I recently bought a house and my parents were happy to give me all my baseball cards back.

A month ago I decided to go through those cards for fun and on the off chance I had a hidden gem somewhere. Anyway, I found 2 opened packs of 1993 SP.. cards still tucked in the foil. To my surprise, there was a Derek Jeter Rookie card sitting in the first pack! Even though I'm not a collector, I figured the card must be worth something. I did some research and learned it could be valuable if it was graded. So, I sent it and a few other cards I had in my old collection to BGS. Im not a collector and have no intention of selling cards, but I thought it would cool to have the Jeter RC that hasn't seen daylight since 1993 in a nice case with a high BGS grade on it.

I just received the email from BGS that said this card was marked as "Altered". I called BGS and was told that someone probably cut it or tried to repair the card.

I am completely shocked as to why this happened. The card has never left my parents house and the box it was in literally hadn't been opened since it was sealed up in the mid 1990s. Does anyone have any ideas as to what makes a card "altered"? I definitely didn't do any touch ups on the card or alter it in any way. Is it worth sending it back again?

TIA!!

[dougnash]

For modern cards, a lot of times Altered= trimmed. I have bought cards on eBay before, submitted them for grading, and had them come back as altered. I compared them to an unaltered card and sure enough there was a size difference. Very small, but noticeable compared to an unaltered card. I've also taken cards straight from the pack to a grading service and had them come back as altered. I just resubmitted it and it came back with a 9 or something like that.

So put it up against a card you know is unaltered. If it's a different size, you're out of luck. If not, just resubmit with your next batch. But be sure to put it in a clean Card Saver first

[user_2f51w]

Thanks! I'll check it out when it comes back in. I definitely didn't trim the card... Didn't even know that was a thing. Maybe it's just a defect from the factory.

[once78]

I was a collector of Basketball and one of my friends pulled a Triple Threads autograph of him. I purchased it off of him. So I saw him pull it, I said I would buy it, he handed it to me at that moment. I handed it to the shop owner to send to beckett. So the card didn't leave the shop that day (out of pack straight to beckett) fast forward a few weeks and it came back altered to. So it does happen and I can't tell you why.

[user_2f51w]

Just an FYI update:

I got the card back and the bottom of the card is cut unevenly. Looks like this was an error from the factory, which is too bad. Based on how my other cards came back, This one would have easily been a 9.5 or higher.

[djohn]

Misaligned and miscut cards definitely happen and it sucks that the grading companies simply return them as altered, but not sure what else they could do other than slab them as "authentic". I can't blame the grading company for not trusting someone as to whether the miscut was from the factory or afterwards (as some people try to slightly trim a card to get better centering or fix edge issues).