Altered high grade E93s in Mile High?

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by benjulmag

So you're saying then that if such work is undetectable, it is okay to do so without disclosure, even though a prospective buyer would regard such information to be material to his/her decision whether or not to purchase the card?

Your question is based on the assumption that the buyer would want to know as if might influence his/her purchasing decision. If it were me, and I was buying a card that had had a stain removed and there was absolutely no trace, I couldn't care less and it wouldn't make a difference in my buying decision one way or another.

Let me turn the question around on you. So, let's say you're buying a card that had a stain removed, but there was absolutely no detectable trace. What difference does it make in your purchasing decision if you (or anyone else) can't tell?

[barrysloate]

David- I'll ask you a question:

Suppose you bought a baseball card in an 8 holder and paid $5000 for it. Then sometime afterwards you discovered it once resided in a 4 holder because of a light crease and a tiny stain. The card was worked on, and the work was so good that it was undectable and thus graded an 8. And you also discovered that when it sold in a 4 holder, it went for $500. Would you still feel that since the work was undetectable, you would be entirely comfortable with the transaction?

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

David- I'll ask you a question:

Suppose you bought a baseball card in an 8 holder and paid $5000 for it. Then sometime afterwards you discovered it once resided in a 4 holder because of a light crease and a tiny stain. The card was worked on, and the work was so good that it was undectable and thus graded an 8. And you also discovered that when it sold in a 4 holder, it went for $500. Would you still feel that since the work was undetectable, you would be entirely comfortable with the transaction?

Barry, the way your question is worded, yes, I would feel very uncomfortable with the transaction.

Now, take out the words 'light crease' with the rest of the question being the same, and I have absolutely no problem with it.

[darwinbulldog]

I can understand being opposed to soaking a card to remove a stain, and I can see being in favor of soaking a card to remove a stain, provided (and this is perhaps just a hypothetical) that it does not modify the composition of the cardboard itself. I've enjoyed the various thought experiments posted in this thread but have neither seen nor thought of a good reason to privilege the use of one substance over another if its effect on the card is the same.

I don't know if the effect on the card is the same in practice, but if it is then what logical reason could there be to care if the soaking chemical is formaldehyde, cough syrup, water, gasoline, liquid nitrogen, or monkey semen? Either soaking is inherently okay or it is not. In theory, you are just removing molecules that were not previously there, and if that's the case then it's ethically equivalent to brushing off the molecules of a bread crumb that fell on the card; it's just harder to do.

My understanding, however, is that if the card has a stain, the staining itself is the result of an earlier chemical reaction with the cardboard, and so, whether you're removing it with distilled water in your living room or paying a restoration expert to use some other chemical to accomplish the same thing in a laboratory, either way you are necessarily altering the chemical structure of the stained card to return it to its clean state. That said, there are people on the board here with far more education in chemistry than I have, and I'll defer to them if any of my assumptions here are incorrect.

[Peter_Spaeth]

In Glenn's terms I guess the way I had been thinking of it was that if just water could get a stain off, then the stain really hadn't interacted with the paper so much as it was just sitting on top of it, and that if it had interacted you would need a chemical to undo it, but the recent discussions suggest that may be too simplistic or just flat out stupid and wrong.

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

In Glenn's terms I guess the way I had been thinking of it was that if just water could get a stain off, then the stain really hadn't interacted with the paper so much as it was just sitting on top of it, and that if it had interacted you would need a chemical to undo it, but the recent discussions suggest that may be too simplistic or just flat out stupid and wrong.

In this case there must have been some chemical reaction, no?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1914-CRACKER...item25a897d0d8

Maybe not with the '74 Topps Frank Robinson.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

In this case there must have been some chemical reaction, no?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1914-CRACKER...item25a897d0d8

Maybe not with the '74 Topps Frank Robinson.

Probably why bleach is so commonly used on CJs? But I would have to defer to people who know paper.

[poorlydrawncat]

I think there’s a really interesting angle to this that no one has really mentioned yet.

Sure, right now there might not be a reliable method of detecting the use of these chemical solvents (including water). But the fact of the matter is that by using chemicals on the card you are unquestionably changing the card and its chemical composition. Now that change may not be detectable through smell or blacklight or other existing means, but someday there will likely be invented a method that CAN detect the exposure to chemicals.

And at that time, assuming baseball cards are still a thing and the grading card companies are still around, you could imagine a world in which they might start labeling these cards as “chemically altered”. In such a circumstance, I could see there being far more demand for cards that had not been exposed to chemicals (and still retained caramel stains) rather than those that have evidence of them being removed. Much in the way unmolested classic cars are often worth more than their shiny, restored counterparts. But again, I only see this happening once methods are developed to detect the chemical exposure.

And all that being said, I just want to add that I think people would probably be more lenient to water exposure because (a.) people are used to water being in everything already and aren’t bothered by it and (b) water exposure could theoretically be due to humidity or natural causes and would be hard to directly attribute to soaking (potentially). That being said I'm sure for some it would be a deal-breaker too.

TL;DR: If you're okay with exposing your cards to chemicals that can't be detected now, would you regret exposing them if the technology becomes available to detect the difference? Because at that point there's no going back.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I would guess the technology exists now, but it would be anything but cost-effective for the TPGs to employ it.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I would guess the technology exists now, but it would be anything but cost-effective for the TPGs to employ it.

^^^^^ This is exactly right.
The technology exists to determine what chemicals a substance has been exposed to and it can be done without destroying or damaging the object.

Even simple exposure to water should leave some trace, not in what it leaves behind, but in what it removes and how it affects the paper itself. Some papers are more likely to be affected than others.

Papers are basically fibers mixed with water then drained on a screen and pressed to thickness. Some have things added at different points in the process depending on what you want the paper to be like. The paper for our money has red and blue fibers added, and recently they also add a plastic strip. Other papers get whiteners, sizing, coatings etc.

Soaking would typically remove a bit of sizing, as a lot of it is just starch usually from rice. It can also loosen the fibers near the surface. Something that isn't usually visible by eye but would be with decent magnification.

Many stains are just "stuff" that's settled in the tiny pockets between fibers. Others are stuff that's gotten into the fibers themselves. The first are fairly easy to remove and I believe should be removed. The second are more of a gray area since removing them would require more than just water.

Here's a little before and after to ponder.
Before - As found, nice, but lots of surface dirt from laying in a loose stack in a dusty attic for .........a long time.


After -
Cleaned with water and a q-tip. Just a light surface cleaning to remove the easiest of the dirt and grime. Sent in expecting a 40 since it was still a bit grubby, hoping not to get an A from the spot I overcleaned. Surprise!


It's not going anywhere anytime soon, and I have a post-it on the back of the slab so if I check out suddenly the wife or kids can disclose the cleaning.

Altered? Preserved? The dirt would have done damage eventually, and the little bit left will, just not as soon.

I'll have to take a high res scan of the after, a network of tiny cracks is visible in the clay coating (Typical, nearly all T206s have that) and much of the remaining dirt is in the cracks.

Very soon I'll have access to a bit of equipment that I believe has enough magnification to show the loosening of surface fibers from water. I even have a soaked candidate to test. (A desktop scanning electron microscope, Supposedly not enough to see the very tiny stuff like viruses, but enough for nearly anything else. )

But that costs 50K and the devices to detect chemical composition start around 30K if I'm not mistaken. Plus some training...........I can't see TPGs using them under the current business models. The ROI just wouldn't be there.

Steve Birmingham

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Let me turn the question around on you. So, let's say you're buying a card that had a stain removed, but there was absolutely no detectable trace. What difference does it make in your purchasing decision if you (or anyone else) can't tell?

IF there was no physical change in the card compared to when first issued, I would not care. But if (i) the chemical makeup of the card had been changed, detectable or not, OR (ii) color had been added to disguise the stain using period dyes (and let's say therefore not detectable), I sure would care.

You are going down a slippery slope here. Once we start condoning undetectable stain removal that changes the physical/chemical properties of the card, what's wrong then with repainting the entire card with a period dye, the result being to make the card forensically indistinguishable to a card that had the same dye applied when the card was first issued?