BGS Grading Tip: Ink on Edge Will Result in Low Grade

I was watching a BGS mailday video by UltimateBoxBreaks.com and came across something really interesting. 

One of the cards that was sent in was a Denarius Moore 2011 Panini Prime Signatures 1/1.  Unfortunately, that card came back with a final BGS grade of 5.0!

What in the world caused it to get such a low grade?!   Well, BGS was nice enough to include a note with the card stating why its final grade was so low.  It was because there was ink on one of the edges.

Here's a screen-grab one the ink on the edge.  I've circled it in red.  It's actually a very small ink mark.  It looks like the player (or maybe the owner of the card) accidentally nicked one of the edges of the card with either a sharpie or a ball point pen.  Either way, the results is a really really, and I mean really, bad edges subgrade.

I even looked up the BGS grade online.  Here it is.

The edges got a 4!  This just goes to show how careful you have to be handling your cards, and inspecting them for flaws before you send them in.

(And as a side note, it is worth noting that the card's final grade was a whole 1.0 higher than its lowest subgrade, which is a rare exception to the general rule that you can only get 0.5 higher than your lowest subgrade.  Check out this Beckett BGS Grading blog post for more information on that.)

Now, I've already blogged about the ink stain problems on 2013 Topps Five Star Football cards.  Imagine if you sent one of those cards in for BGS grading.  You'd probably get just as low of a grade, or perhaps even a lower grade.  I've seen some 2013 Topps Five Star Football cards with big time ink stains on the corner edges -- much bigger than that little ink mark on this Denarius Moore card.  It would be such a shame if you hit a really nice card in your box of 2013 Topps Five Star Football only to find out that it had ink stains on one of the corners.  Since you would only expect that card to get a final BGS grad of about 5.0, then its value would be incredibly diminished.

UPDATE:  Since I wrote this blog post, UltimateBoxBreaks.com did another Beckett BGS Grading mailday video, and two 2013 Topps Five Star Football cards came back upgraded because of ink stained corners.   Apparently the ink stained corners were so bad that BGS didn't want to grade them.  I'm assuming that the grades the cards would have received would be even less than a 4.0.