Has anyone attempted to remove dried rubber band from a card before?

[NiceDocter]

Another option thats worked for me in the past if the rubber band residue is rock hard is to just barely flex the card without totally bending it ....... the ultra stiff rubber will sometimes almost pop right off! You need to do this in both a horizontal and even better in a vertical way to the direction of the rubber residue. The card already has some paper damage across the face so I dont think youre going to hurt it any worse. Be careful and good luck! Rocky

[Zan]

Was pretty much able to pick nearly all of it off with just my finger nail. No harsh chemicals, no freezing, nothing.

[brianp-beme]

Nice...unibrow be gone!

Brian

[Snowman]

Nice! Looks good. Improving it further would likely be risky. You could soften the hardened rubber by using isopropyl alcohol, which would turn it into a slime that you could probably wipe off, but that would also cause the inks to bleed if left on for too long. Diluting it might work, but again, it's still high risk.

I wouldn't use Bestine solvent on it though. Some people claim it's just pure heptane, but that's very much not true. It's actually only 25% heptane. It does not evaporate cleanly like other solvents and will leave an oily residue behind. I can detect if a card was soaked in Bestine, so the grading companies *should* be able to detect that as well.

[FrankWakefield]

Card looks better, well done. Thank you for posting the pic.


I didn't say to soak a card in Bestine, I wouldn't do that, either. But unless you take a card that has been subjected to a touch of Bestine and then section it and subject that to a gas spectrometer, then I have doubts that you'd be able to identify cards that have had a touch of Bestine and then exposed to circulating air for a while. And I reckon you'll still think you can.