Is it ethical to alter cards and sell them without disclosure?
 

Let's see the sizes of the islands.

Define altered please

You missed a very important option.

Depends on who the buyer is.;):rolleyes::D

^^^
alteration vs. restoration
I choose the middle, as i didnt think restoration was illegal, as long its disclosed properly.
Altering as for chemicals , is absolute disservice.
The debate as for washing/soaking is another can of worms.
Thats been asked probably a dozens times before.

We are specifying that the alterations are not disclosed to the buyer, as some (1) in the other thread are alleging that non-disclosure is viewed as acceptable by a majority.

I don't think there is any debate over whether one may sell a "restored" or "altered" card honestly stating the facts of its nature.

Yeah, without this it isn't going to be very informative, I fear. The real issue is what people deem to be alteration. Someone like Travis could easily answer THIS question no, but that would be premised on his belief that certain things are not alteration.

We are assuming that words mean a thing and not the opposite of that thing, and in this case the generally understood meaning of the word as it has been consistently used in the relevant hobby over the last three decades.

Yeah, a lot of gray area of things that are pretty dissimilar when you just say altered.

How about one group that encompasses improving creases, wrinkles, dents, bumps.

One that encompasses "cleaning" (whatever that is)...would love to hear what that actually means if it's something beyond wiping a card down with something moist.

One that is trimming.

One that is adding color.

What other categories would there be?

Anyone who has ever soaked a card and later sold without disclosing should probably answer "yes" from the limited 3 choices above or be considered at least some degree of hypocrite.

The attempt to reduce the justification of doing something to a card that improves its appearance and not disclose it because a grading company is ok with it, is bs...to me. We saw on BO, a few years ago, examples of millions of dollars worth of cards that went into holders that were recolored, trimmed, etc etc. Were the alterations so great that they were missed or were the people submitting the cards given special treatment?

I find the argument to defer to the grading company once a card passes grading to be entirely dismissive of the responsibility of the submitter/seller to not disclose what was done. And again, if one truly believes they are not doing anything wrong then why not just let people know? Especially if you are in the camp where you feel nobody cares.

I am positive there is reasonable disagreement on edge cases.

Surely, if we dove deep enough, we could find a case of "robbery" where two reasonable men disagreed on if that particular case did or did not constitute robbery. Nonetheless, as reasonable men, surely we could reasonably say whether we are for or against "robbery" as it is generally understood by English speaking people to mean and has consistently been used.

While polls have 100 character limitations, even if I wrote a 300 page treatise we could surely find an example not covered and then use that as the angle to hem and haw.

I think one is altering a card if they do anything to the card that changes its appearance with the intent of making it look better. It is clear some alterations are acceptable to most in the hobby and are considered innocent. Either way, if something was done, it should be mentioned. Let the buyer decide if they are ok with that. Some will and some won't.

Certain things have generally been deemed acceptable whether or not it's perfectly consistent. Soaking cards out of a scrapbook. Rubbing off a gum stain with a nylon. I don't think it's ever been black and white. As framed clearly 3 is my answer, but I am not sure the term is that clear.

Going forward I might suggest polls be cleared by a lawyer...:D

Again, we can hem and haw over the edges or we can be reasonable. I get 100 characters in a poll as limited by the system software, and as can probably be told by the 2 typing issues had to cut them up and chop them down to get under the limit was is. Even if I wrote that 300 page treatise, there would be something absent we could then use to hem and haw and wring our hands some more.

All reasonable people are well aware that almost any other comparable issue of behavior or criminality can be answered in the common sense. I am positive that if we had had a dialogue for long enough you and I could find an examplar of something like "robbery" that we disagreed on if that case constituted. Nonetheless, we could surely both answer the very obvious general question right off the bat that we are against the practice of "robbery", as English speaking people who know what the word means.

I agree with all that said to specify what is considered altering.
Bob

Since we're all speaking English, I guess this is what it means. Of course, it's unclear precisely how this gets applied in the world of soaking, bending back a corner, wiping off some gum, etc.

I don't think, given the range of things that are done to cards, it's as clear cut as "robbery" for example.

What things done to a card that any significant part of the card-collecting population consider to be alterations are not, in fact, alterations and you should not disclose when selling a card?

Personally I am OK with the two things I mentioned, and beyond that I would object with varying degrees of outrage. But I think more than a small minority of people are probably OK with smoothing out a paper lift, or pressing a surface wrinkle, and like it or not there is greater tolerance than I have for cleaning. Whether or not people think of these things as not alterations at all, or as alterations but OK ones, is a matter of semantics. But all that said, I think the poll would mean more if you had defined the term, rather than having a poll where one's definition of the term at issue might determine the answer. Just my two cents.

Personally, I get the same information from tallying the people who claim ignorance and pretend they can't say if alterations should or should not be disclosed because of some X or Y edgecase, the logic of which would not be used for any other kind of fraud or crime.

Options 2 and 3 are likely to include false positives in terms of what you are trying to get at -- people who think cleaning is not an alteration, would not disclose it, but are going to say they think true alterations should be disclosed.

If I played this game, we would end up with the 300 page treatise and we would still not get 100% alignment on the exact edges - which is the whole reason this is the sophistry used by most of those who are in favor of frauds, it will never get to an actual decision.

It is being used in the common sense way it has been used in our hobby for three decades or more. I understand and expect the exact list of people who will use this as the angle to hem and haw and avoid clicking yes, but literally nothing will satisfy - there is always one more edge case.

As a common sense person I can say I am against X crime or think Y is fine, as it is generally understood by people who are not pretending they suddenly don't know what a term they have expanded long passages about before means, without going over every possible case of it to categorize if that exact case counts. It should be incredibly obvious that there are edge cases of disagreement; if it was something many of this boards members and friends did not profit from, people would be able to understand this.

I'm going to concur with Peter.

Even without a 300-page treatise, maybe just 5-10 examples of alterations (or activities that don't rise to the level of alterations) would be helpful.

From my observations over many years, there isn't as much consensus as you think there is. I think it's more complex than just positing there are a few edge cases but the rest is clear.

You are one of the, as of right now, three Yes votes, so you have already voted that alterations need not be disclosed, rather than pleading ignorance.

If you did anything to them, prior to selling, and don't disclose doing so, and then whatever you did was discovered by the purchaser you sold them to after the sale, or anyone else thereafter, frankly, I would say that is unethical. I prefer lower grade, raw cards so as to enjoy my cards and not worry about this sort of thing.

Yep. I'm one of 3. Appreciate being outed, so thanks for that.

Full disclosure: I've never altered a card. Except for the one time when I bought a 71 Bazooka Numbered, which was hand cut. The cut job was bad, so I cleaned it up.

And I would argue that alteration is completely acceptable, without needing to be disclosed to a potential buyer. It's still in my PC, so I haven't sold it. But I will have no problem someday selling it without disclosing my hack job to the buyer.

If you define "altering" as wiping off fingerprints/wax/gum residue or such, then I think that is acceptable without disclosure.

If you define "altering" as trimming/pressing/recoloring, then I think that is not acceptable.

I thought polls were anonymous?

As should be expected by anyone who reads my numerous posts on the topic, I voted "No, it is unethical to not disclose alterations."

But I don't think this is the point of disagreement that matters most. The more important line in the sand is what qualifies as an "alteration" to begin with. Most people (and ALL grading companies) do not consider a soaked or properly cleaned card to be altered. Same with flatting out a bent corner.

I feel like it's reasonable to set some parameters here. If you don't want to define what you mean it can be agreed that creasing a card is altering it. But I would also agree that maybe there's no need to disclose you personally creased the card if you can see the crease in your scan.

Yep. For that matter, taking a card out of a pack could be altering it.

Also depends on the card. If I get a 1961-63 Post Cereal card with a fuzzy edge and trim it straight, I don't consider that to be a sin against the hobby, since the cards were hand-cut in the first place. Same with other hand-cut issues (strip cards, Hostess panels, Bazooka, etc.)

You're welcome. I believe everyone can see who voted for what? The poll is not set to private, because I knew full well some people would plead ignorance but then vote yes to up those numbers without looking responsible for it.

You can choose either way. When not anonymous I doubt they are very accurate.

That's exciting. Didn't realize that until now. I guess if you click on the hyperlinked number of votes for any given option, it will show the list of who voted for each option. And it looks like Snowman voted for option #2. I suspect because his definition of alterations is different than yours.

Perhaps you could reasonably draw a line at trimming hand-cut cards, because the borders are only ever defined by an end-user who tears or otherwise takes scissors to a factory sheet of some sort. You might be able to carve out an exception there without going down a slippery slope, because third-party graders even disclose the inevitable alteration right there on the label: "Hand Cut."

You can draw a sharp line at changing the size of a card that came from a factory and that was not distributed direct to consumers with dotted lines or borders or perforations.

Personally, I'd also draw a sharp line at adding any chemicals to the card, including water. To put that in context, I'd concede that soaking probably doesn't do longterm damage to some cards, and I probably own soaked T206s without knowing it. But we add shades of gray when a card cleaner decides to use tap water or starts messing around with Kurt's secret, proprietary "water-like" formula.

Frankly, I wouldn't trust a stranger with a financial interest in changing a card's appearance without detection to be the final arbiter of what an objectively acceptable soak looks like. Travis' comments here illustrate the point. Letting card doctors decide what counts as doctoring is like letting the fox guard the proverbial henhouse.

As other have said, there are many definitions of alterations in the hobby. Here are a few that I can think of:

Soaking a card glued onto something else like a scrapbook: Acceptable
Soaking and pressing a card to remove wrinkles: Not Acceptable
Trimming a hand cut card such as a strip card: Acceptable
Trimming an oversized factory cut card: Not Acceptable
Erasing a pencil mark from a card using a standard eraser: Maybe?
Erasing a pen/ink mark from a card using chemicals: Not Acceptable
Adding color to a card: Not Acceptable
Rebuilding corners: Not Acceptable
Re-backing a skinned card: Not Acceptable

Respect to those who have been honest. Honesty is always a virtue, whether I agree with them or not. I hold the Yes voters in higher regard than the people who pretend they have no idea what an altered card means.

Yes, Snowman's is that the word means the exact opposite of what the hobby has meant for 3 decades+, that a crease is alteration and not his work on a card. If I say I define a tree as a rhinoceros, that doesn't make the tree a rhinoceros. His definition is not the ignorance the others claim whenever convenient, but that it means the exact opposite.

Yeah, I agree with soaking. I don't see the alteration aspect of soaking a card. The card wasn't glued to anything when it was issued, so to me the alteration was gluing it to something. If you're able to soak it apart from what it was glued to, the card is in its original form and I don't see how it's been altered.

I'm not sure if my vote was motivated by honesty. It was as much a function as a protest vote, due to my contrarian nature.

That and whenever people demand absolute answers based on ambiguous criteria, my contrarian streak tends to run amok even more violently than usual.

It not only obviously is unethical, it is illegal.

I'm probably very aligned with Greg on the ethics of all this, but I agree a poll based on a loaded term does not work.

Oh I wasn't counting you among the honest, as you said one thing and voted another, when you apparently did not realize the contradiction could be seen.

Thanks for clarifying. I would argue that I haven't been inconsistent on this matter. But rather, the poll is poorly constructed. But I suppose we can agree to disagree on that score.

I wonder if it would be acceptable to "alter" the options as follows:

Option 1)
Yes, it is perfectly acceptable and ethical to sell an altered card without disclosing this to the buyer


Option 2)
No, it is unethical to not disclose the alterations

If you've soaked a card....then you've pressed a card. Once you've soaked it, it almost never wants to be perfectly flat anymore. You have to press it into and continue to hold the shape you desire with pressure while it dries.

The poll was worded precisely as I would have predicted, given its author.

Isn’t the only thing that matters to the people who move the market, ie make our cards worth thousands if not more dollars, have the card in a numbered PSA holder? That's all that matters to the people who move the market. It’s not right but it’s the way it is.

This is not when people mean when they talk about someone "pressing" a card. There are people here who think that there's an army of card doctors that run around soaking cards and then squishing the hell out of them with a mechanical press in an effort to expand their size so that they can then trim them down.

Personally, I think this is pretty funny. Believe it or not, this is actually a myth. It's not a thing.

Another thing people refer to as pressing is smashing out creases with a spoon. This actually is a thing and it damages cards. This IS an alteration, and it's something I won't do. It is perhaps worth mentioning that this is also something Kurt does not do either. This will get your cards flagged as altered stock by PSA and SGC. Don't do it.

Putting a book on top of a card while it dries to ensure it dries flat is not what is meant by "pressing" a card.