Every slabbed card has a story, don't it?

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Snowman

They clean cards and remove stains. They don't, at least to my knowledge, trim, recolor, or rebuild corners or anything like that.

We're just quibbling over our differences of the definition of "altered". I am using the definition that the grading companies use in practice, which is that cleaned cards and soaked cards are acceptable and will receive numeric grades if they are cleaned properly. They all allow cleaned cards. Just look at the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of cards with white borders and beat-to-hell corners and other obvious significant surface wear that are graded as numeric. Those graders aren't stupid. You can't get a beat-up-looking card with white borders without cleaning it. Yet, they allow it. Every time. What they don't allow is a card with some soap scum on it or one that looks like it lost a 12-round title fight with a jug of Clorox.

I don't think they actually allow it anymore than they allow trimmed, recolored, creased removed, rebuilt cards to pass grading. If the job is done well enough or the work done is not actually detectable, they might not catch it or maybe it is that they catch it almost 100% of time except for submitters who have those privileges.

Unless the grading companies are complicit in that they see the work done and look the other way and slap a number on the card, responsibility is with the submitter (assuming he/she did the work) or the person submitting the card for the person who did the work. Not the cops' fault is they do not stop a robbery in progress.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

I don't think they actually allow it anymore than they allow trimmed, recolored, creased removed, rebuilt cards to pass grading. If the job is done well enough or the work done is not actually detectable, they might not catch it or maybe it is that they catch it almost 100% of time except for submitters who have those privileges.

Unless the grading companies are complicit in that they see the work done and look the other way and slap a number on the card, responsibility is with the submitter (assuming he/she did the work) or the person submitting the card for the person who did the work. Not the cops' fault is they do not stop a robbery in progress.

I don't know how often they detect trimming, recoloring, crease removals, or rebuilt corners, but I can provide insight into how often I've had cards rejected for cleaning because that number is zero. I've cleaned thousands of cards. I've literally never had a single card ever once rejected by any grading company for me having cleaned it. Not once. That said, I also don't use anything that would damage the card or leave behind some sort of residue. Surely there are people out there who are in fact damaging cards because they don't know what they're doing and I'm sure the grading companies are flagging those with at least some degree of accuracy.