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T206Collector...and when I saw that it had received 202 visits since I listed it, I suspected there might be a discussion about it here.
I purchased two nice raw Polar Bears (Mattern and Latham) a couple of years ago -- I don't recall if I got them on ebay or at the Gloria Rothstein show in White Plains. In any event, when I tried to get them graded a few months later, they came back with "soaking, cleaning" on the label.
I was confused because I had never had a problem with soaking in water. I brought the Mattern and Latham to an SGC table in White Plains and spoke with one of their senior graders. I told him that I had never had a problem with soaking cards in water, and asked him what they had found here.
He said something other than water had been used. And, in fact, he did smell the cards to see if he could detect bleach. He could not smell bleach specifically, and I could not either, but he said that some sort of chemical had been used. When you hold the cards under a bright light, the purple in the Polar Bear back looks a little shinier than usual.
For the record, I did interpret my conversation with SGC on these cards as "water okay - chemicals bad" -- a philosophy I already held. Which is not to say that SGC specifically endorses water soaked cards, as much as they either (a) cannot detect such manner of soaking; or (b) are okay with such manner of soaking.
Obviously, I disclosed SGC's opinion on this cards in my listing.