Quote:
Originally Posted by Lorewalker
If it is so accepted and so immaterial then why not just tell the world? I know snowman lists a lot of cards for sale. He also openly, to his credit, admits here to cleaning and improving cards. Not sure where he actually draws the line. Anyway, when I look at his ebay listings oddly I never see him disclose any work done...I guess those cards he has listed are not the ones he has worked on. 
And I do think with each passing day fewer collectors care what has been done to the card. I imagine a majority of the collectors who read a disclosure that a card was worked on would be discouraged from buying. They see it passed grading so the assumption is that whatever was done must not have been considered improper. The concept of improving cards is more widely accepted in the hobby than it was even a few years ago.
If TPG is not seeing evidence of the improvements, the question is, should they? And if not then is the work just that good or is that work too subtle to be detected. Evidence should not just be applied to sloppy work but if a tree falls in a forest... |
If I'm selling an altered card, I mention it in both the listing title and description. You can look through my sold listings and you'll see plenty of disclosures like "TRIMMED", "CREASED", "PAPER LOSS", etc. Those are alterations, and if I have a card that is altered, I will disclose it. But if I did something to a card as benign as pushing back down a bent corner with my thumb or safely cleaned something off the surface of my card without damaging it, then no, of course I'm not going to advertise it because there's nothing to disclose in that case. If you're interested in the card and ask me point blank, I'll tell you, but I'm not going to advertise it. That's not an alteration and I couldn't care less if a small faction of hobby ultra-purists disagrees with me. This is the main problem. Many of you guys are casting your preferences onto others and making absurd "criminal" accusations about anyone who sees things differently. And with stuff like card cleaning, polishing a modern chrome card, or soaking a vintage card, your viewpoints are in the minority.