Mastro Auction Descriptions

[Archive]

Posted By: T206Collector

Grading companies (at least SGC) will enforce the community standard for pre-war card review. If you want to change the standard, then your beef is with your favorite grading company. If the standard is an attempt to enforce a moral code of undetectable crimes, then you have gotten much further than any civilized society I am aware of in terms of its statutory laws. If you stick with the detectable crimes, supported by a money-backed guarantee, that's as good as it will ever get -- even if you create a collector's society of purity police. Because, at the end of the day, the purity police will have to convince the grading company that its standards need to change; and the only standards that will be enforceable with any level of consistency will be those alterations that are detectable with any level of consistency.

The problem I have with these kinds of threads is that the temptation is to rehash all of the previous polls and debates about what the community standard is and should be for various forms of card doctoring -- from gunk removal and erasing pencil marks to spooning wrinkles, recoloring and adding paper, the views of the community are not uniform and the passions for and against such practices are widespread and heartfelt. It is absolutely vital to understand the standards applied by your favorite grading company to the cards it reviews. If you are uncomfortable, then you need either a new grading company or to have your grading company change its standards to meet your needs.