[Jordanfanatic]

It's a very unique situation when it comes to grading non sports collectibles, but 1993 Collector's Edition and International Collector's Edition are very unique sets in that they were never meant to be played legally, and they went to great lengths to keep these cards from being used in tournaments.

Amongs the several features are the sharp corners and the golden edges, but also to avoid altering and be more recognizable during tournament play, the cards were deliberately centered leftward, meaning that they were deliberately printed off centered. The right edge is almost always thicker than the left edge.

This has naturally kept the value of the cards down as the overwhelming majority of these cards get consistently graded off centered, with very few exceptions being the ones that were actually printed off centered towards the middle.

It's definitely a very unique situation and even in the card gaming industry, these sets are one of a kind, so I'm not sure if Beckett has a way to deal with handling unique features such as these ones, or if at this point it might just be too late. Can Beckett take a second look at this and see if there's a way to confirm this issue, and possibly correct it? Or will the value of the set remain down as this off center issue kills the chances of ever receiving pristine mints consistently?

[y2hood]

That's a good question. It's been quite a few years since I've played Magic (still collect and grade for pleasure) and in the 90s/early 00s we purposely avoided CE for the reasons you've stated. In 1999 I could have had a Black Lotus CE for $50 while an Alpha or Beta would cost north of $400.

I would guess 20 years later a collector would be happy just to have a card with those artworks and there is a premium on them now. As far as Beckett's approach, I don't know that they account for things like cards purposely being printed off center. I don't thing WOTC intended for those cards to be graded at the time or taken care of in general.

[jeffv96masters]

I can tell you from personal experience exactly zero considerations going to be given to an issue that's has a majority of the cards off center. I had this same issue with 1990's Finest Baseball cards where several players were notoriously impossible to get centered. Found one player after 22 years of searching. They never once made any considerations for the fact the centering on almost every other example was off. It was what it was and peoples "thoughts" like mine made little difference . On one player I bought every example I could off multiple web sites regularly. Of 275+ items a total of 5 were centered in the 9 range and exactly 1 was almost dead perfect. Only took 22 years of looking to find it.

Good luck in the endeavor they've never changed their outlook on it and neither has PSA. You can try- let us know how they reply.
PSA same deal with some Wacky Package issues. Not once did they bend their guidelines.

Jeff