Is it ethical to alter cards and sell them without disclosure?

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Ask Kurt if he's willing to drink it.

I see we have a new litmus test. Would you lick your cards?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I see we have a new litmus test. Would you lick your cards?

No, they don't taste good.

[vintagerookies51]

To echo what others have said, this poll is meaningless without a definition of altered. People then fall on a spectrum of how far they deem something to be acceptable, and won't be captured by 2 or 3 poll responses. Personally, I couldn't care less if a card I buy formerly had a stain on it. I see it as no different than someone wiping away some dirt on a vintage car they're trying to sell. But if that car had a part that was replaced without disclosing it (or a card that had color added to it without disclosure), that's a problem.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I see we have a new litmus test. Would you lick your cards?

Originally Posted by steve B

No, they don't taste good.

Actually the Cracker Jacks taste pretty good; the more stains the better. T205 and T206 don't have much taste, and T3 taste awful - like old cardboard.

Of the post-war issues, cards cut from Milk Dud boxes taste the best.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Mark17

Actually the Cracker Jacks taste pretty good; the more stains the better. T205 and T206 don't have much taste, and T3 taste awful - like old cardboard.

Of the post-war issues, cards cut from Milk Dud boxes taste the best.

Well, now we've arrived full circle. Is there an obligation to disclose that you licked a card? Surely, some people here would consider it fraud if you opted not to disclose this info at the time of sale.

[BabyRuth]

While we're on the subject of licking cards................

[nj3356673]

Originally Posted by BabyRuth

While we're on the subject of licking cards................

Are you selling this SGC card?

[gunboat82]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I see we have a new litmus test. Would you lick your cards?

This might have been tongue-in-cheek, but I'll bite. A core premise among many defenders of card soaking is that distilled water is acceptable. Presumably, distilled water is acceptable because they've used it before, seen no adverse side effects, and made their own determination that it doesn't change the card's composition once it dries. They can't make the same assumptions about Kurt's Card Care solution because Kurt doesn't disclose what's in it.

So the litmus test would be "if you're not sure you can safely drink Kurt's Card Care because you don't know what's in it, then you shouldn't be making unsupported claims it works just like water."

And, no, I wouldn't lick my cards. But if I did, I'd consider them "Altered - Saliva Added."

[Peter_Spaeth]

I guess the good news is much of this may be moot when the hobby moves on to counterfeits so good they can't be detected. Then the name of the game will be to alter cards to make them look worse, to ward off any suspicion they just look too nice for what they are.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I guess the good news is much of this may be moot when the hobby moves on to counterfeits so good they can't be detected. Then the name of the game will be to alter cards to make them look worse, to ward off any suspicion they just look too nice for what they are.

Actually reminds me of a story about pearls (and a trade, since we all love a good trade) from a recent WSJ article.

Relevant bits here:

In 1917, Maisie Plant, the young wife of a rich businessman, couldn’t stop admiring a magnificent double strand of pearls from Cartier. The Parisian jeweler was looking for a U.S. headquarters in New York. Pierre Cartier offered to swap the necklace, priced at $1 million, for the Plants’ mansion on Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street in Manhattan. Maisie’s husband, Morton, promptly agreed to the trade.

What happened afterward is a cautionary tale.

Why would an industrial baron like Morton Plant—with vast holdings in railroads, steamships and hotels—trade his elegant mansion for a few shiny lumps that came out of an oyster?

For millennia, pearls had been prized around the world and were often more valuable than gold or even diamonds. In 1917, the $1 million the Cartier pearls fetched was worth at least $24 million in today’s money.

What neither Plant nor Cartier could know was that just months earlier, Japanese entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto had industrialized the technology to create cultured pearls.

Mikimoto was soon mass-producing them. The price of natural pearls began collapsing in the 1920s and stayed down for decades.

In 1957, after Maisie died, her Cartier necklace sold at auction for $151,000.

In recent years prices for the finest natural pearls have rebounded. In 2015, a Cartier pearl necklace comparable to Maisie Plant’s sold at a Sotheby’s auction in Geneva for about $7 million.

Even so, that’s about one-third of the price of the Plant necklace in 1917, adjusted for inflation.

Cartier got the much better end of that pearls-for-real-estate swap. In 2016, a comparably sized, less-renowned property two blocks up Fifth Avenue from the landmark Cartier building sold for $525 million.

[BRoberts]

Is it ethical for an auction house to not disclose that a grading company rejected a card the auction house has in its auction because of concerns the card is a reproduction? Would love to hear the opinions of some of the auction house owners who frequent the board (Scott R. and Scott B., Al, etc.).

[parkplace33]

Originally Posted by BRoberts

Is it ethical for an auction house to not disclose that a grading company rejected a card the auction house has in its auction because of concerns the card is a reproduction? Would love to hear the opinions of some of the auction house owners who frequent the board (Scott R. and Scott B., Al, etc.).

Unless the AH is grading it themselves, how would they know it was rejected?

If they were grading it, I can't imagine they would still have it in their auction. But who knows these days.

[brianp-beme]

This German transfer from 1923 somehow avoided being licked by a young tongue who had not the access to a source of running water.

Brian (not from my collection...my tongue has been up and down my non-Ruth example, and if I owned a Ruth, it would be dealt with in likewise fashion)