[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Snowman

This idea that water is OK but "chemicals" aren't doesn't much make sense to me. People like to joke that water is a chemical (dihydrogen monoxide), but it's not just a joke or really even semantics. Water is indeed a chemical, so I don't know what you're talking about when you say that chemicals shouldn't be used but water is OK. It seems to me that the more relevant question is whether or not whatever is used on a card causes damage and/or leaves behind some sort of residue on the card. Water does not, so it's OK to use. I don't know what else is in Kurt's Card spray, but whatever it is clearly isn't damaging cards and doesn't leave behind a residue because thousands of cards are being sent to the TPGs every day from submitters who use it (literally thousands) and none of them are being rejected because there's nothing on it to reject. And this isn't just because people are slipping them past some noobie graders and getting lucky. We're talking about the best graders at every TPG grading ultra high-end cards. Guys like Reza and Scott Hileman. These guys know what they're doing. They're the best of the best. The most experienced graders we have. These cards aren't "sneaking by them" because they're incompetent. They're being given numeric grades because the cards have not been altered. They're being graded because they deserve numeric grades. Cleaning a card correctly does not alter it any more than cleaning your car alters it. There's nothing there to detect. Unlike fingerprint oils and decades of grime, which very much do alter the card. It always cracks me up whenever I see a massive red wine or coffee stain on a card with a numeric grade, as if that card stock hasn't been altered. Those cards will degrade much quicker than other cards in the same grade without stains, yet nobody complains about that?

At the end of the day, as long as you're not adding to or taking away from the card itself, then you can't say it was altered. Not the actual card itself. Someone got gunk or grime on the card and someone else safely removed it. The card behind that gunk and grime was left fully intact and undisturbed. This is an absolute nothing burger.

Nobody cares except for some small vocal minority on message boards and a social media. This isn't a battle worth fighting. You can't win it. Just accept it or move on to another hobby (where cleaning of collectibles in that hobby will surely also be widely accepted).

Well stated and reasoned.