Could someone explain the "soaking" process ?

[Shoeless Moe]

Originally Posted by JollyRoger

Here's a recent soaker. Soaked in warm tap water.

...

[Bill77]

My second soaked card

[Shoeless Moe]

Looks like it it lessened the creasing too.

So maybe you can soak cards to lessen creasing too, who knew.

[KMayUSA6060]

When you soak a card, say you send it in for grading... Can they tell? Does it affect the grade? Or is the soaking process purely for raw cards you never intend to grade, and is strictly for eye appeal?

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Shoeless Moe

Looks like it it lessened the creasing too.

So maybe you can soak cards to lessen creasing too, who knew.

Yes and no. In my experience it is always a temporary fix. The length of time it last varies quite a bit on how it was soaked and dried. It is the reason you see a graded card and go "how the hell did that get a 8 with those creases". It did not have those creases when it was graded.

[njdunkin1]

Does this look like a good candidate for soaking?

[Bill77]

I had my card in the water for about 5-10 minutes and changed the water about three times because of the amount of paper that was coming off of the card. Then I patted it dry with paper towel then wrapped it in fresh paper towel and put it under a stack of big art books for about a week changing the paper towel out every day. The creases are even more faint in hand than in the scan, but the Piedmont printing on the back is now almost black instead of blue. I am guessing that it was some kind of reaction to the glue that was used on the card.