[Archive]

Posted By: leon

After further consideration, and listening to all arguments, I will pretty much agree exactly with what Harry said above. Technically doing anything to change the state in which you find a card is altering, of course.(I cut and pasted Harry's answer and changed it a little bit):

I am OK with:

Removal of surface grime (wax stain, paper remnants, glue etc.)
Erase pencil marks and pen marks when possible. Indentions might still be left and such is life. Anyone should be able to see the erased marks in this case and I always disclose these upon selling cards like this (V100's come to mind)
Remove a tiny surface wrinkle that does not affect the "structural integrity" of the card

To me, all of these are OK. If a wrinkle can be taken out and it is impossible to tell, then I do not have a huge problem with it. If the "structural integrity" of the card, as Corey Shanus puts it, is changed then I guess I do have a problem with it. I wouldn't want someone that owned the card in the future to be fooled and have a bad card with a heavy crease taken out and then there is an issue with normal handling and they don't know why (because a big crease was taken out)..

Here is what I do not think is OK:

Taking out a crease where the card's "structural integrity" is compromised.
Adding anything: color, paper, gloss, etc.
Cleaning a card with anything that may damage the card (bleach, etc.)
Removing a part of the card (trimming, power erasing borders, etc.)

I guess that all of these things are forms of altering, but they definitely have different severity levels.
regards

edited to add I am still not going to try to take a wrinkle out of a card...I would probably mess it up and it would be worse than original