Actually, her radio interviews are interesting. People should listen.
http://www.comiczoneradio.com/susan-cicconi.html
Three interesting points are she specifically calls conservation a type of restoration; she says any work, including conservation, has to be disclosed; and she says
any work done to the item (including pressing out a wrinkle) is restoration/conservation and has to be disclosed. She said she's a professional conservator/restorer, so any work she's paid to do she says is conservation/restoration. If you ask her to remove a piece of scrapbook paper from a card, she would call that conservation/restoration that she would disclose.
She basically considers 'restoration' and 'conservation' to be different variations of the same basic thing-- and lumps them together under the same heading:
work done to an item.
She talks about comic books and, in answer to a call in question, she calls removing a collector's pen or pencil mark to a card be restoration/conservation, in part because she said she finds it impossible to believe you aren't removing some of the surface of the item. And, even if you could remove the pencil or pen mark without removing any of the card, she catalogs it is conservation/restoration because you're doing work on the card.
So as a professional restorer/conservator for Sotheby's she's pretty hardcore-- including more hardcore than most baseball card collectors--, and what she says refutes PWCC's 'tenants.' 1) She would not separate 'conservation' and 'restoration' as PWCC tried to do, and she'd say "Of course it (anything done to a card) has to be disclosed." And she'd refute PWCC's retoric about "bringing back a card to its original state" and "any work that cannot be detected." She would say you can't do work to an item (including removing errant ink or removing scrapbook paper) without physically altering the original item is some way.
And she's clearly against non-professionals doing the work, as amateurs can, and often have, damaged the items by doing ignorant stuff.
And, in response to a call in question about pressing comic book pages, she implies that CGC is wrong for not disclosing certain types of restoration/conservation in their grades. From the discussion with the caller, it's apparently also controversial within the comic hobby that CGC doesn't disclose it.
And listening to her talk how she does her work, I'm certain she disclosed in writing what she did to the Ruth card. She says she produces a form listing/checklisting all of the work she did to the item, no matter what is the work. The omission of that information (whether when submitting for grading and at sale) would have been done down the line.
But she also talks about the processes, which is interesting.
As Sotheby's collectibles restorer/conservator/preservationist, she'd provide most useful expert testimony in a lawsuit or prosecution.
And as an added bonus she basically refutes everything the "maturing the hobby/watch this CGC video" PWCC defenders posted on Net54.
I predict that provenance will become integral to the hobby and grading.