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Posted By: Todd Schultz

Seems to me, as I mentioned in another thread a week or two ago, that it's cheating, especially with ersatz high grade cards. A card should have nice edges and corners if it lived nearly all of its life pasted in an album. I realize that any high grade pre-war card somehow escaped heavy handling for years, whether in between pages of a book, carefully placed in an envelope or drawer, cigar box, etc. Still, the reward (read price) for surviving unscathed seems cheapened if you can accomplish the same thing by removing cards from albums and soaking off the glue. Just my two cents.

Different philosophy for beater cards whose value will not change much if the back is enhanced. As for cards in the middle, I'd lean toward disfavoring soaking--again the card looks better than it should from what might be perceived as an unfair advantage (sitting nicely out of handling range in an album), and is increasing in value from that advantage.