As other have said, there are many definitions of alterations in the hobby. Here are a few that I can think of:

Soaking a card glued onto something else like a scrapbook: Acceptable
Soaking and pressing a card to remove wrinkles: Not Acceptable
Trimming a hand cut card such as a strip card: Acceptable
Trimming an oversized factory cut card: Not Acceptable
Erasing a pencil mark from a card using a standard eraser: Maybe?
Erasing a pen/ink mark from a card using chemicals: Not Acceptable
Adding color to a card: Not Acceptable
Rebuilding corners: Not Acceptable
Re-backing a skinned card: Not Acceptable

Glchen, You forgot a common one.......Wiping off an wax/gum stain.

It's the pressing flat of corners or wrinkles that I think most here think of when "pressing" is mentioned. I don't think your definition is the only one. Most don't really consider smashing a card to increase the size and then trim some excess as being any kind of rampant problem...I've never seen anyone here particularly worried about that.

But a soaked card now has bends if you don't intervene and you are pressing those bends out to make it seem "normal" again.

Spoon smashing for a crease/wrinkle probably compresses the card stock and Kurt does not do that, I don't believe. But essentially (and a simplified way of thinking of it) he "soaks" the area that is creased or wrinkled and massages it flat for drying.

Correct pressing and soaking a card into a flat state alters the thin/thickness of the card stock it will get rejected 9/10 times. Might have a chance with scg. Also spooing is comical too, can spot that as it removes the gloss from the card and leaves a shiny dull where the person attempted it. Also, sometimes leaves divots in the Cards. It’s amazing what people think/do to Cards.

Soaking a card does not "cause bends". All paper stock is dried flat. That's how paper is made. If you soak a card and just let it sit there to dry out in the open air, one side will evaporate more quickly than the other and that will cause the paper stock to bend. Drying it slowly and holding it flat while it dries ensures that it remains flat. A soaked card is a perfectly flat card. No "pressing" is necessary. You can dry a card flat with something that only weighs a few ounces.

Point of clarification - I thought there was a video out there with Kurt working a crease. He'd spray his magic juice on it, and then sort of press it or rub it with some plastic sheet. Lather, rinse, repeat, until it got to the point where the crease was less pronounced.

Thought it was on that 87 Fleer Jordan...

But maybe this is different than smashing out creases with a spoon?

And one side will absorb water more quickly than the other when you soak...creating a bending. More subtle than the drying bend, but doesn't just work one way.

Kurt used a tortillon to massage the wrinkle. Someone in the pro-doctoring camp would say that's fine as long you say "massage" instead of "smash," and "tortillon" instead of "spoon."

Kurt would vote 3, because nothing he does is altering cards. :)

See? Precisely why we need more context.

Full disclosure: Previous to today, I had never heard of a tortillon, although I would have expected that if prepared correctly, they could be succulent.

You say that as if there is no difference between someone gently dabbing water onto a card with a soft, rolled up, wet piece of paper vs smashing the shit out of it with a piece of metal. You're free to disagree with both techniques, but let's not pretend that the two are equivalent.

This. Not that we don’t have enough attorneys weighing in, but it might be good to remember that there is criminal liability for, I don’t know, theft by deception (“a person is guilty of theft if he purposely obtains property of another by deception. A person deceived if he purposely… prevents another from acquiring information which would affect his judgment of a transaction “). That’s NJSA 2C:20-4B, from MPC 223.3. If the amount in question is more than $75K, theres a presumption of jail time with that.
And, also in NJ (but sourced from MPC 224.2), a person commits a crime of the fourth degree if, with a purpose to defraud anyone, or with knowledge that he is facilitating a fraud to be perpetrated by anyone, he makes, ALTERS or utters any object so that it appears to have value because of antiquity, rarity, source or authorship which it does not possess. That’s NJSA 2C:21-2.
Not sure how you dodge that if you’re not disclosing alterations that cause a buyer to pay more for a card than they would. And as to value, I think we can agree that, say a legitimate PSA 8 T206 Cobb or 33 Goudey Ruth isn’t a helluva lot more expensive and rare than an A graded card

Lol. Good luck with that argument in a court of law.

Objection, lack of foundation. I doubt there is any such thing as a legitimate PSA 8 T206 Cobb or Goudey Ruth. :)

I don't think there is a single other crime we could do this for that would considered in the same way here.

For example:

If I asked a different board if murder was ethical or unethical, there would be a few jokey troll responses of ethical and everyone else would say unethical. It might spark an interesting debate about where, precisely, the line between murder and self-defense lies, as is often vague still in many jurisdictions and on which reasonable people may disagree. That would not cause a significant number of posters to claim, well golly, they can't answer the question because they aren't sure if case Y that someone might reasonably consider not self-defense really is and should be termed self-defense. Nobody would pretend they don't know what the crime is.

Or let's say it was "is it ethical or unethical to claim false deductions on your taxes to lower your tax bill?". A sizable number of people would honestly answer one way or the other this time, a more split vote but a majority against it. It might spark some interesting side debate on if certain stretches are truly a 'false' deduction or might be seen in another light and what falls within the textual basis, exactly. People would not pretend that they cannot give an opinion because they might disagree on a particular edge case. Nobody would pretend that they cannot understand the issue or the ethic raised.

Of course, it is only within a context where a sizable body has a financial interest in exactly this kind of act, that we pretend it is difficult to understand the subject or render any opinion. You are all experienced card collectors and you know perfectly well what is under discussion. For no other crime discussed in a body that is knowledgeable about the subject pertinent to the crime, would you pretend to be unable to be for or against the concept because X might disagree in Y exact scenario. It is this kind of sophistry that is really the main point - when a side must resort to arguing no conclusion can be made because there is always an endless array of possible scenarios still to go or against disclosing a fact, it is a clue that they are doing something wrong. Is it really so hard to just disclose with honesty? No, it's not hard. It doesn't pay as well, and so some will be commendably honest and admit it and a greater number will wring their hands and pretend they can't figure it out, while a majority don't have a problem stating the obvious.

Those questions are clearer. Yours is more like the open ended question, would you do anything unethical? Of course most people would say no, but given the ambiguity, you're going to get a lot of false positives (or maybe it's false negatives here) because one man's unethical conduct is another man's ethical conduct.

Hot take: Soaking a card doesn't seem quite as black and white as murder.

You invoked taxes, so let's bore everyone to death by poking at it with my own little taxable tortillon.

As a CPA, I will tell you that there are a lot of shades of gray out there when it comes to deductions. While there are some areas that are clearly black and white, most of the action is in the gray, and discerning the precise shade of gray, and whether it makes sense to go there. You may be shocked to learn that as a tax preparer, my professional standards only require that there must be at least a 40% chance of prevailing in tax court for me to sign a tax return as the preparer.

40%!!!!

I would posit that similar ambiguities abound when it comes to cardboard.

While I'm happy to agree every day of the week and twice on Sunday that trimming is out, I'm not as convinced when it comes wiping off a fingerprint. I've never done it, but it doesn't seem all that terrible to me, and certainly shouldn't be considered as tantamount to murder.

But I guess I'm probably a little too prone to seeing too many shades of gray, and being willing to play in that gray when appropriate.

Much of life is a gray area. Even murder to an extent, but I am not going to bring up a very divisive issue.

You are surely literate enough to realize that the socratic companion was used, not a claim that trimming a card or pressing an edge is tantamount to murder. I am often derisive of the general reading comprehension level, but we are surely not that bad here! Nonetheless, thank you for making my central argument for me. While there are likewise large areas of gray and the edges are fuzzy, you are somehow sill perfectly able to render your opinions about these other subjects.

Actually, I never asked an open ended question nor did I ask whether you or any poster would "do anything unethical". I asked if it is or is not ethical to sell an altered card without disclosure. The other examples were phrased in the same way for precisely this reason.

Read what I wrote. I said yours is MORE LIKE the open ended question, because it's imprecise.

And you say "water" as if Kurt uses "water." If Kurt is peddling regular ol' distilled H20 as his proprietary "Card Care" "polish and spray" solution, then that's a separate conversation.

Cool. I guess we've gotten to the ad hominem attacks part of our program. Or maybe this is the second act, since you've already established that I'm not particularly honest.

Ask Kurt if he's willing to drink it. :)

They are all the same format. None of them stipulate all, or any, of the sub possibilities that different people consider in the gray edges. They are formatted exactly in this way for precisely this reason.

You all could perfectly answer the formatted question, limited to 100 characters, for another crime, and we would all be aware that if we examined 100 cases we would not agree on all of them, but none of us would pretend that we are not cognizant of the central subject and issue.

Again, I don't think there is anything close to the consensus here as to what is acceptable and what isn't. You and I might agree on nearly every case, but even going back many years there were disagreements about a lot of things, like erasing pencil for example.

Well, the statutes are fairly straightforward and that was my intent - to show that this kind of conduct is proscribed and has penal consequences. And, I like my chances of establishing probable cause to a judge signing off on a complaint or even a grand jury. I agree that the burden needed to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt is a different animal, but that’s more about allocation of investigative and prosecutorial resources than whether or not we would call something a crime or not.

I think the first was your criticism that I looked at both sides of the transcript. The second was my reply to that. If I thought there wasn't a record of both things I did, and the two things I did were contradictory and I was unhappy because you saw the two things, would you call me honest? I doubt it.

I would say the third was you falsely trying to pretend I made an argument that in any way whatsoever related altering a card to committing murder.

The fourth was my response implying that you are fully capable of reading and you know that was a blatant mischaracterization.

100% the case. And I doubt, that if we sat down for 5 hours and discussed the limits of self-defense, we would have exactly the same boundary. Or for robbery. Or for tax fraud. Or for any other crime under the sun. And yet, we would both be fully able to render an opinion on the subject.

Right, but in a poll that uses a term we both use differently, our answers would not convey much.

Kurt needs to show us what he does to the cards when the camera is not rolling. If you watch his videos you will see at the times he stops the video and then comes back that the clamps and paper are in different positions. Suggests he is taking the cards out and then working his magic. I have a very hard time believing a wrinkle and dents come out of cards when you spray them with his secret sauce and just let them dry.

Of course the island of defenders (same people who likely defend PWCC's actions) will say otherwise.

Surely as people who possess common sense, we could say we are for or against tax fraud, jaywalking, murder, watch thievery, illicit ticket scalping, or literally any other crime of your choice except this one. We could convey our general framework and values because we speak English and know perfectly well what we are talking about. And then we might dive into some fun 'what if?' scenarios and play with the edges (possible with our fingers or a tortillon or a spoon), but in no other crime of which we were both generally informed would we play dumb and pretend we can't render a judgement.

Fair enough. You win.

How do I change my vote?

Personally, I'm cool with jaywalking.

Fair enough, I think this is in a different category though, because to me yes there's a core (trimming, recoloring, adding material) but there are many other things as to which there is no consensus and which to me are more than the examples around the edges in other cases. Thus, when one says murder, it has a relatively common meaning. I don't think that's true, any more anyhow, for alteration. It just means different things to different people. So people could say yes, selling an altered card without disclosure is fraud, but they might think cleaning was fine.

I don't believe the alteration of the T205 Ewing on the right was disclosed when I bought it. But then again, I must have a predisposition toward cards that have undesirable alterations.

Brian (I am, however, an anti-jaywalkerite)

The reason I chose that particular example as one of my three specifics, is precisely because the line between punishable by law homicide and legally protected self-defense is very very gray. In most jurisdictions it is poorly defined both within the legal code and among the public conception, relying on clauses about 'reasonable fear' etc. that are not strict lines or well defined at all. And yet, you and I are still able to state the absolutely obvious - we are against murder. Now, if we were together on a panel of two judges, we would almost certainly come into conflict playing with those further refinements - is this particular case a 2nd or 3rd degree murder, or a legitimate act of self-defense? We surely both believe those two things exist, a murder and an act of self-defense, and that one of them should be punished by the law, but will we draw the line in the exact same narrow spot? Probably not, because we live in a complicated world of grey. We would surely both understand that there was room for grey, and that disagreement on a particular case may happen. And yet, as functioning people, we could surely still express a negative opinion on the central issue. We don't have to sit and pretend that we can't say murder is wrong. You don't start with the grey, you start at the center for any other crime, and we are fully capable of rendering our judgment of that crime, while being cognizant that there are many particular cases that reasonable folk may or may not consider to be covered by the edges of that rendering.

Again, replace this crime with any other crime about which the two or more people conversing are somewhat informed on, as we all are about card alteration. We are able to function - except when it's card alteration in a group of hobbyists. Only here is it so tremendously difficult.

I don't know what he uses in his card spray. But if it doesn't leave any residue behind and it doesn't damage the card, then it doesn't alter the cards.

I see we have a new litmus test. Would you lick your cards?

Fair enough. In Brian's Bob Ewing example above, can we stipulate that the mustache doesn't have to be disclosed if we call it "natural growth?" And removing the mustache again is fine as long as it's "shaving" and not "erasing?"

I believe George Costanza said something similar.


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So by this definition if you crease a card you have altered it. If there are stains or things not on the original it has been altered. You

Soaking a T206.... I understand that some folks here think that soaking a T206 is altering a T206. I think that folks that have more than just a few T206s, graded and or not graded, have cards that have been soaked. Almost all of them have been soaked. ESPECIALLY if the card had great corners (which to me indicates a higher likelihood that the card was flour pasted into a scrapbook 115 years ago, and that is why the corners survived. A bunch of folks seem to be sanctimoniously in denial about that.

Slabs... When I buy a slabbed card ( think a T206 in a PSA 3 holder ), if I then break it out and put the card in with my other T206s, have I then altered that card? Haven't I altered it from graded to raw? Don't some folks buy the grade, not the card? If I sell a breakout card, should I disclose that it was graded? If I don't, is that fraud?

Where's that beating a dead horse video?

Semantic rabbit hole, the value has increased on some of these cards so much we should disclose any work like a fine art listing does.

I have a T206 that I asked Ted Zanidakis to sign on the back. He did sign, and sent it back to me. So... Ted altered the card??? I'm complicit to that??? If I sell that card to someone, it's pretty obvious that Ted Z signed the back. I need to disclose that to a buyer anyway??? IF, in the process of taking scissors to a over-taped mailing package that I get one day, in the process of using the scissors, I cut a T206 in half, if I then sell that card, am I committing fraud if I don't tell the buyer that I cut that card in half???

Unfortunately Ewing's mustache is not natural, being a construct of horse hairs and porcupine quills, and is held on by adhesive that would leave sticky residue if this facial hair substitute was removed. Ethical calisthenics would be required if I were to remove the adhesive and decide to go down the nondisclosure route.

Brian

OK here are two more ethical or not questions like all the other examples in this thread....
If you sent a card to PSA and Beckett and both times it came back as trimmed and a third time sent to SGC and gets a numeric grade of 6, 7 whatever, would you have to disclose the two trimmed results when selling the SGC card?

OR, if you cracked out a PSA 4 and resubmitted and got a 7 the second time , would you need to disclose that it was previously a PSA 4 and now its a 7?

So true. And the information provided is very exhaustive. It will note the type of and reason for the restoration, the year the restoration was done, the person who did the restoration, and the name of owner who commisioned the restoration.

These lengthy descriptions and histories belong only to the upper crop of art. Most of the art up for auction will not include lengthy histories of the piece or any special documentation. Perhaps you might know the previous owners name or the original owner's collection it originates from, or the original gallery that sold it, but more often than not with modern art you won't get anything other than your painting.

In my opinion no, but if asked about prior history you have to answer honestly. One could argue it either way though.

ADD: If you KNOW the card is trimmed, but snuck it past SGC, I would say yes there is fraud unless disclosed.

+1. No need to tell of previous grades if it's graded UNLESS asked. It's never ok to not tell the truth.

As for the original subject, the term "altered" can mean too many different things to answer the question.

One thing I am always a bit amazed by - super sharp corners on a pre war card with tiny borders. I guess some people don't care or are just ignorant.