[drcy]

Raking light simply means light shined at sharp, nearing parallel angle to the surface. Used to reveal surface texture, imperfections.

I'm offering no official opinion on the card as I'm not a grader or alteration expert, just reporting what we saw (or, in this case, didn't see). We looked very closely and in different ways and saw nothing errant. Ordinarily, if the there are alterations it will fail at least one (and usually more than one) of the tests. And I think it would be darned hard to remove the ink without altering the white surface. I have the microscopic photos saved on a computer and said I'd foreword them to Pete. Scott and I were both of the the same opinion-- we saw no signs of alterations, and we were looking at microscopic blow ups of the card on a full computer screen, along with doing the normal tests of black light, looking at gloss in sunlight, comparing to other T206s (same gloss as the other T206s, no area of abnormal gloss), etc. Under the microscope, we looked at the card surface at different angles, including head on, and with different angles of light.

I considered my task to just examine the card objectively, report the scientific details we observed and leave the card theories and opinions to others. I think such a scientific report can be more worthy and reliable when the examiner is sticking to the facts and forgoing personal opinion.