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Joe_G.It's been my experience that SGC does a good job handling this situation. They downgrade writing severely with nothing higher than a 50 possible (the small mark has to be minor, barely detectable). SGC 20 & 30 are much more typical for a card with writing (depends on amount - one word, two words, one line, two lines, etc.) They are also very good at finding erased marks and will grade accordingly.
Having had several Old Judges graded with writing present and writing erased, I suspect SGC handles it as follows:
An erased name (say two words, first & last name) grades the same whether the pencil or ink markings are present and clear as day or erased and barely detectable. If there is enough evidence to show a name was on the back of an Old Judge, it will be downgraded equal to that of a card with the writing still present.
I think this is fair. This gives no incentive to erase and try to improve the grade. I myself have never taken an eraser to a card. Again, SGC is very good at finding erased marks on cards, they've found them on cards I didn't notice were erased. If SGC stopped grading an erased card, there would be yet another decent slice of Old Judges that wouldn't get slabbed.