Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowman
Not everyone who cleans cards is doing it to make money though. I know a lot of people who regularly clean commons that are worth nothing. The only reason they don't go around announcing it to the world is because we now live in the age of social media and there's no shortage of unemployed hobby clowns with a platform whose sole goal in life is to run around trolling anyone and everyone they disagree with and attempting to get them "canceled", regardless of whether their opinions on the topic matter one bit.
The fact of the matter is that people have been doing this stuff to improve the condition of their cards since the very first cards were ever printed. And when the grading companies arrived at the scene, they all continued to allow it. It's the way it's always been and it's how it will always continue to be. Don't be afraid of the boogeyman. Nothing bad is going to happen to your cards. Half of your collections are made up of cards that someone improved in some way at some point. The idea that this stuff must be stopped or policed somehow is absurd. All these guys like Sports Card Radio, DanTheCardMan, AIH, etc., are the hobby equivalent of the guy with a megaphone and a hand painted sign, standing on a milk crate, preaching at pedestrians in downtown San Francisco. The truth is, nobody else cares. They're just baseball cards.
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I assume you are too young to have been in the hobby when I started. I assure you most people did not think that way back then. Not that it was pure, far far from it (many of today's doctoring superstars got their start in those days), but things you think are innocent and immaterial were not regarded as such for the most part. And sure, some people just want to improve the appearance of their own cards. But a huge part of it is done to deceive, for profit.