The Card Altering Services Saga Continues
 

It comes as no secret to anyone that many of the cards in the Hobby, especially the higher end ones, are altered, but in legitimate slabs receiving normal grades. I follow a few card collectors on Youtube, and today saw a video of this guys work, I will link his Instagram below for those of you that are interested in seeing what he is doing. Spoiler alert: he's altering cards, and sending them into PSA/BGS and getting higher grades. Vintage, modern, it doesn't matter. He has videos altering a 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth, A 2000 Contenders Brady, He just sent in an 86 Fleer Michael Jordan after altering it, and is awaiting a grade. But Wait, there's more. He has the audacity to sell some of the products he uses to alter cards, so you can use them too. I don't want this to be an "old man yells at cloud" post against the grading companies and the people that do this, but damn it is difficult some time.

https://www.instagram.com/kurtscardcare/

The sad part is that he gets a lot of likes and positive comments. The flippers just don't care.

That video is eye opening but, with the money involved in the hobby, most won't care. Sad.
.

Right on

It's terrible Leon. I've purchased altered cards before, ones with clear designation of being altered, though. I understand that with comic collecting, CSG grades restored comics but then designates them with a number grade and a restored label, which I personally would be fine with, if PSA did the same for its cards. I think the worst part is that while altering has been going on for a bit, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Oh Well, every thread needs a card

https://i.imgur.com/2oUqIjv.jpg

As long as we value condition, there will always be people trying to improve condition to improve value. No stopping it, unfortunately.

The bottom line is the big money players in this industry, auction houses, and their mega buying investor/collectors have spoken. They could care less about what was done to a card as long as it’s in a PSA more so PSA or SGC with a numbered grade. Think Kendrick Wagner.

I had another post about what has changed most in the last few years. The amount of money in the hobby currently is insane and I don’t see that changing.

What is in place for it to continue? The quick buck flips of modern are gone. Chase cards harder to find. People losing weekly/daily on "set breaks". Psa graders tougher than ever. Many headwinds here, aside from recession, bitcoin tanking etc

I'm not seeing any softening on the really good stuff, vintage prewar, and Post War in Major AH’s I’m not talking average stuff I’m talking high end quality vintage in high grades..I see no headwinds at all. Investment grade cards again not mediocre PSA 8 60’s mantles I’m talking Cobbs Ruth’s 6’s and above along with 50’s mantles mays Jackie in 8’s and 9’s. Not slowing. The set breaks modern and crypto are all garbage not shocked it’s tanking and has further to go. The goods not going anywhere.

Restored cards
 

This stuff has been going on since the 80’s
Ruth’s Frankenstein together using parts from commons
Turning them into high grade cards

Can you go into a little more depth about this, I haven't heard about it before. Goudey's were getting cut up and pasted together?

Restored Cards
 

Back then I knew one of the restorers quite well. He told me the process. And not just Goudey's. Many cards from many sets 1800's up to the 1950's. Even full sets.

Perhaps I'm missing something. Where is he altering cards? All I see is a guy taking cards with bent up corners and pushing them back down, sticking cards in a humidor and then letting them dry them flat, and gently cleaning smudges off the surfaces of cards.

If any of these actions I mentioned qualify as "altering" a card to you (resulting in it not being grade worthy), then you might as well just throw in the towel on collecting cards altogether. Because 99% of collectors who have raw cards with bent up corners are going to try to push those back down. And sticking a card in a humidor is no different from shipping one from Vegas to New Orleans in the summer.

This has also kicked around my head for a while. At the end of the day, we all draw our own line in a different place. I do think that purists are going to have to soften in their stance or get out all together, because I see a wave of “card preservation” normalization is coming.

We are the only paper-based collectible hobby that does not conserve items. This is a 200 year old print:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...a%20Curtis.jpg

This is a 100 year old print:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...%20Johnson.jpg

The 200 year old cotton-rag print has a better chance of making 300 than the 100 year old wood pulp print has to make 200. I am not against properly performed efforts to conserve the paper. More and more of our cardboard is going to rot away due to acid from the wood pulp paper. The chemical reaction can be halted and some of the damage reversed with proper conservation techniques. If we do nothing we allow the history of the hobby to rot away.

Yes, you are.

Follow the link in the first post. The landing page has these words, among others:

"...Sprays, Polishes, Edge/Corner repair..."

bullseye !!!

I love the black gloves.

This is not what Evan Mathis and the rest of the parasites are doing though.

You want standards of conservation? Then have a governing body establish them and hold people to those standards. I'm 100% okay with a standardized fair playing field but these folks are just scunbags trying to take advantage. Complete transparency on the label, "was graded a 2 in 1998, has since been "restored" by knucklehead #1 in 2005, knucklehead #2 in 2023, and here's your product. What'll you give me for it?

I've said it before, the most valuable T and E cards should be the ones with fat borders that show 100+ years of wear on them.

The only thing those fat bordered E cards are good for is making smaller higher grade ones. We started seeing E cards that fit into T holders here a decade and a half ago and of course most people oohed and aahed. It's an art form.

I collect paintings and conservation is considered a good thing.
Rebacking seldom hurts the value and a good conservator adding paint
Rarely affects the value. Prints that have cardboard receive acid free backing to
prevent foxing. But spoon a corner or soak a card is considered altering and bad?

I collect paintings too, and all those things are disclosed in the item description. PSA Goudey Ruth with thin borders? Not a peep about the "restoration" that's been done.

Paintings are unique items. The restoration is done to preserve them for posterity. Cards are altered to deceive, period. To artificially differentiate them from other examples of the same card. There is no analogy here.

It sadly seems a bit generational of late. I am a soaking only person and I know many that would call that a forbidden area. However the “modernistas” as I like to call them often lean more investors than collectors. The more you can make it worth, hell or high water, vs respecting the life it’s had is king.

Read the comments on this and it might ruin your night.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT81mRhhR/

“Taking cards with bent up corners and pushing them back down” is a dictionary definition of altering, sorry.

The roller stick he sells is an altering tool.

Has anyone ever seen a crease somewhat reappear or a corner coming back up after the card has been holdered? I've wondered if these alterations are permanent or temporary fixes.

Comic Books are cleaned and pressed all the time.. then submitted..

In my experience I believe many of the pressed or especially a humidity repair by swelling paper fibers can be temporary. However, those who do them could care less as long as it’s there long enough to get through a grader. If the card lies in the wrong environment and that moisture is removed, logically it returns to the previous state.

Not meaning to be rude, is an old argument and used constantly. They are, but it’s half the story. Conserved comics are labeled as such if the grader can locate it, it is not an “allowed” practice for a straight grade.

https://www.cgccomics.com/grading/gr...le=restoration

Every grading company for cards has a grade for that too…authentic or altered authentic. No big difference.

The comic book argument holds no water.

Same for cgcs numismatic services. A cleaned coin is worth a fraction of an uncleaned one.

I am not aware of any serious card conservation efforts. Who is out there doing work to preserve cards that will otherwise disintegrate because of their paper?


If the alteration made and the history of the card are disclosed when auctioned, it's probably not all that bad. If it needs to be covered up that the card used to be a PSA 4 before it was an 8 and what was done to it, it's probably bad. It's not really that difficult.


Other collectibles grade altered items separately, and denote that it was done. This is is not all what our alterers and scammers are doing here.


Probably belongs in the "what has changed since you started?" thread, but not that long ago everybody at least paid lip service to the idea that alteration needed to be disclosed and fraud was bad. Now, we have regular posters whose majority of posts are shilling for a fraud ring or explaining why it is okay. I can't see how this is a good shift for anyone but the practitioners of it.

I dislike the practice of cleaning and pressing comics. However, CGC allows you to submit books for cleaning, pressing, and grading. If the comic was deemed unaltered before CGC gets it, it won’t get an “altered” designation when cleaned, pressed, graded and encapsulated.

I don’t agree with or understand it….but that’s the world of comic grading.

I think some do re-appear. I have seen cards with grades that do not match the visible condition, with a paper wrinkle somewhere, aka just the sort of thing that would be 'removed' for grading.

Just to be clear, I am not advocating altering cards to deceive, but I am suggesting that some activities are going to be needed if lower-quality stock cards are not going to crumble into dust.

Greg, there are a number of quality conservators out there who will work on sports memorabilia and cards but their services are usually too expensive to make it worthwhile. I had a conservator clean, de-acidify, and linen-back this poster:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...Poster%201.JPG

Which was just about split at the folds. Great save but I lost money when I sold it.

What might be the standard on card altering/conservation in the year 2050? How about 2075? What societal demographic will be leading the way then?

One thing in its history that the sports card hobby/industry has rarely bent over backwards to exhibit is transparency. Just like bad trades are a part of baseball.. An ad in a 1986 SCD offered a 1975 Topps Reggie Jackson NM, $11. No photo. No accountability. So many gaps in knowing what that card might actually look like based on the listing, it borders on absurd. Send a check, spin the wheel.

Now in 2023, many advancements. See what the card looks like before you buy it. Doesn't tell the whole story, but it does help the buyer at least somewhat. However, our hobby swears by 3rd party grading, and the astronomical price structure of high end stuff is completely reinforced by it. Because someone whose qualifications we can't verify slaps a number on our card and offers zero justification for said number, based on a grading scale that is, ahem, unscientifically adhered to, rife with inconsistencies. But if our card hits the number, cha-ching! If we decide to sell. This point is to specifically address the current lack of transparency in our hobby.

In 1983, I got a Beckett Price Guide book and a bye bye to baseball card innocence. 1983 Topps Willie McGee, something like $1.50 (The card shop I took it to to cash in didn't want it.)

All true indeed, lol.

I never once ordered a card that was better than described or often even close by today’s standards. The good cards were sold privately, shops, or at shows…and there was a shop in every city and a show every weekend…which gave ample opportunities. The internet killed the LCS just as easily as video killed the radio star. ;)

Price guides have always been a joke, in the 80s the dealers would sell at a percentage of catalog so you felt like you were getting a deal. They bought at a fraction of catalog. Those prices often were just silly.

I think this happens mostly as a result of cards being stored in humid climates and then relocated to extremely dry climates. I don't think it has anything to do with people "spooning" out creases and them having a "memory" or anything like that. I think this is also how most cards get surface wrinkles to begin with; moisture content from humid environments and then quickly being dried out.

This is also how cards get warped. But that's reversible. Just toss the warped card into a humidor for a while (or soak it in distilled water), then take it out and let it dry flat under a book. Presto! Flat card.

The purists can maintain whatever drawn line they wish to stand behind, but the rest of the hobby doesn't owe it to them to entertain or appease their demands. If I push down a lifted corner with my finger, I'm not going to put a sticky note on my card to remind me of that fact for when I go to sell it in the future. Sorry, not sorry. Everyone flattens down a bent corner. If someone finds that problematic, then they can just go find another hobby, because everyone is doing it and no one is disclosing it because there's nothing to disclose. And every TPG would give that card a numeric grade.

Just look at the comments on that TikTok video linked to in the OP. The comments/likes are about 1000 to 1 in favor of what Kurtscardcare is doing in the video as being completely acceptable. If you take issue with what he is doing, then you are *vastly* outnumbered.

IMO, as long as you are not removing card stock or adding something to the card, then you are not altering it.

Cleaning and pressing is NOT considered alteration/conservation in comics and CGC actually offers the service themselves.

Paintings and prints are conserved to allow future generations to enjoy them. But I agree Peter, when there’s money to be made unscrupulous practices and undisclosed alterations will happen.

True, pressing is allowed.

However, it really only is because CGC threw up their hands at the advent of it in the early 2000s. Due to the reason they admitted they could not detect it well enough to identify in the beginning and gave up. Then they saw a profit to be made on the back end about 15 years ago and started the side hustle.

I do not collect comics, but have many friends in the hobby that are old school and disagree with that decision. They will only collect ungraded copies or for the important issues "Old label" CGC that were pre-04 as they are believed to be less apt to pressing as it was not widely used outside the insider alterers prior.

Personally I think graded comics is sillier than cards as it renders the comic useless for it's intended purpose. I collected in the 80s and early 90s as a younger man and can't see not reading my comics. Different strokes for different folks.

Cleaning is a personal choice and many use it in both hobbies. I think it's shady even with the polishing that people use on shiny cards, the limit for me would be a dry wipe, not any compounds or solvents. However, that's not realistic and I will just go on knowing that others will do what they do. I'm not hating them for it, I just disagree and will not participate. What the grading services either miss or allow still does not change the definition...altering can be looked up in a dictionary. The line just changes based on money and the bottom line.

My favorite shady thing about CGC is that they figured out a way to make cash both coming and going. They will press and restore your book but also offer an restoration removal service, lol. If that's not something to think about...

Just got this in my package from a rare eBay purchase. Couldn’t fraudulent sellers purposely mis categorize their listing to avoid the authentication process.

It's become a fairly common practice already for the scammers, these things just take them a few months to figure out. Keywords in the listing titles cull it out easily - "set", "pack", "box", or "lot" are examples. You can see that issue as people commonly used "set break", "base set", or "pack fresh", they were kicked out of the program. They supposedly fixed that recently if the phrase "set break" is used, but not sure. "Set" will still kick it on it's own.

No lots, sets, or unopened packs/boxes are in the program, so many scammers will sell a fake Ruth with some trash like a free 1983 Topps common to slide it under the lot category and get the fake to the buyer.

I would feel bad about posting this info, but they all know this already. The site is full of them.

You must look for the blue check and eBay statement (not seller statement) that it is 'Authenticity Guaranteed" to trust it is in the program.

For every program that comes out that guarantee's the authenticity of something, there will be a person or people that find a way around it. Even the grading companies are not infallible, fakes have been slabbed before whether they be cards or autographs. The most important thing we can do is educate ourselves on what we are buying, and ask people that are experienced in certain areas for their opinion and knowledge.

Back to the topic at hand. I have purchased cards that were slabbed altered before. If you want to alter a card, that is your prerogative, it shouldn't get judged by the same standards a non altered card does. The inherent problem is the grading companies IMO. Alteration has been around for quite some time, but collectors treating the grade like it is gospel, are an issue, which I feel like that is what a portion of the higher end hobby has become. And if that grade is influenced by some sort of altering of the card, yet still receives a number grade, I have an issue with that.

Beautiful statement, I have several slabbed altered cards as well. I don't mind a bit to get a card at a discount that is a nice display but clearly designated. I also don't mind the savings I get for that purchase, it's all an honest transaction.

I would never remove those cards from the slabs to avoid fraud, nor play the submitting game until someone missed it. A do not want a numerical grade for them in the least, they are altered and the clarity to me is just dandy. Sometimes we shop within our budget and I don't mind having a better looking card that is scarlet lettered. That "A" isn't going to kill me, and I know when I sell there will not be bad karma or an angry buyer down the road who feels misled.

I’m imagining a TPG that doesn’t give a # but instead gives real usable information:

Corners = 90°
Length = 3.52”
Width = 2.51”
Authentic = Yes
Centering = 55/45
Color Added = No
Moisture Content = 5%

That would surely clear out a lot of trimmed, soaked & colored cards. :D

Lots to get into here.

The idea that many of our collectibles have an expiration date of sorts is very accurate. Anything printed on wood fiber based paper will eventually become too brittle to handle from the acid breaking down the fibers.

There are already "standards" for paper conservation. Followed by most conservators and archives.

A few of our cards may be doomed altogether. Many of my Collectors edge cards have already yellowed noticeably, and they're "only" 30 years old. (Damn I'm getting old)


Taking a stance based on what's done in other hobbies might be good. None will really work in all cases.

Paintings are an interesting example. The valuable ones are often cleaned and a professional has a lengthy process, removing old varnish and accumulated filth, carefully painting in areas where the original paint has been lost, and revarnishing with one that won't yellow - or won't yellow as quickly.
What's rarely mentioned is that the professional does all those things with methods that don't cause further damage, and with materials that can be removed. So the restoration is entirely reversible.

Most silver coins you see that are shiny have been cleaned, not with abrasives like a pencil eraser or toothpaste..., but with a fluid tarnish remover. A couple things some may find interesting
The tarnish can be partly removed is it's really bad. This takes some skill and attention. It may also in extreme cases be difficult to fully remove. (I did it a few times for a dealer whose shop I hung out at, in trade for stamps and coins. I also did a couple of my own, one rare but so covered in crud you almost couldn't tell. It only came back to an average level of tarnish, and since it only is G-VG or so, would be inpropper to go further. )

Many of the wonderfuly "toned" (creatively tarnished) silver coins were never that way until recently. Putting a cleaned coin in the right envelope maybe with some of the right chemicals generates a beautiful rainbow tarnish that's considered very desirable. from the time I started collecting coins as a kid until the 90's when I sort of stopped I saw maybe two coins with that toning.
Now they're somewhat common.


I think we all draw the line at different places, I'm ok with light surface cleaning, and would be ok with deacidification on most cards from roughly the 1920's to 1991.
Removing creases? No. I'm sure it can be done, and perhaps done permanently. But it's just going too far. I very much doubt that surface wrinkles and creases can be caused by humidity changes. Out of tens of thousands of cards I have between the 1880's and last year, subject to regualr seasonal humidity changes, you'd think at least one would have had that happen. Nope.

Pushing a corner back down?
Not sure what is meant.
A completely bent corner getting flattened a bit? Ok, if it creased, it should be detectable anyway.
Using a roller to hide that it ever happened? No.

Same for a corner where it's become layered and one layer has gotten folded over.

But as we've seen, PSA themselves will just fold it back and reslab... leaving it with even a high grade. Not something I agree with in any way.


I really don't like hearing people day it's ok or that nobody cares anymore and we should all just get on the altering bandwagon.

I'm with you here. Would be great if creases, wrinkles, tears, paper loss, etc. were all noted as well. Although moisture content wouldn't tell you anything about whether a card has been soaked before or not, it'll just tell you the relative humidity of where it was/is stored, as cards dry out very fast. But every card should come with the grading report viewable online when you look up the cert number. I believe TAG grading does this.

There is no question that alteration is and always has been a spectrum, and different people draw the line in different places. I think, like it or not, Travis is right that as an overall matter, that line has moved to a more tolerant place as cards increasingly get commoditized and a new generation has a different outlook.

altered
 

Yea, I agree....if a guy has a card with a corner bent over. Who wouldn't bend it back over

I dont think thats altering a card