I've been silent lately, but I've been thinking. Is there anything more beautiful than a miscut baseball card?

As collectors, we expect certain things from card manufacturers. One is that their design and photography departments are competent enough to create cards that we will want to collect. Another expectation is that the card-cutting machinery at their printing plants work correctly. Because without proper framing, we're just collecting cardboard rectangles.

As collectors, we bring a lot to the table in our understanding of how to read a baseball card. When a card is miscut, it's no longer a card in the most traditional sense. It lacks focus, a subject, or even proper boundaries. Our approach to reading it is thrown off.

A miscut card is cast aside as a goof with no real value. And while I won't argue the monetary value aspect, I've come to appreciate miscut cards as art, and worthy additions to my collection.

So... if you have any miscut cards, any wrong backs, blank backs, or blank fronts, I'd like to trade you for them. (I'm not looking for cards that you've attacked with a pair of scissors, a box of thumbtacks, or those cards covered in tape or with writing on the front. Those will have to wait for another trade proposal.)

If you're interested in trading, you can email me here or by clicking on the image of Clem Labine's wonderfully miscut 1953 Topps card (to the right). Let me know in your email what you'd like in return. I'll post the best cards I receive.