Cutting cards from an uncut sheet????

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

When paper fibers are wet and subsequently dry, they are forever changed on a fundamental level. You may not see it with your naked eye, but the card is altered by definition. There is no argument otherwise.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1557/PROC-267-429

alter verb (CHANGE)

to change something, usually slightly, or to cause the characteristics of something to change:

Therefore, a change in the fiber structure of the paper literally alters it.

Complete and utter nonsense. Do you even know how paper gets made you dumb f*?

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Complete and utter nonsense. Do you even know how paper gets made you dumb f*?

LOL yes, the scholarly article is wrong and every scientist who studies cellulose fibers as well, but a scamming mathematician knows it all. :rollseyes:

The fact that water is used in the process to create paper and setup the structure of the fibers, doesn't prove using water isn't alteration. In fact, it proves the major effect water has on them in breaking down the bonds.

You truly are incredible. You are either really dumb, or seriously grasping at straws to defend your shady practices. Just take a hike you scamming piece of garbage. I'm done with you. If the best you can do in response to scientific proof of alteration is "that peer reviewed study is nonsense," then rational discussion with you is useless. Welcome to the first spot on my ignore list.

[drcy]

The answer and reasoning are simple. The below are thee different wordings of the same idea:

** If stating the fact that a card was cut from a sheet at a later date alters the market value, you have to state that it was cut from a sheet at a later date.

** The only reason why someone would omit the fact is because they feel it would lower the market value: Which is exactly why you have to state it.

** If one sincerely believes and asserts that stating the card was cut later from a sheet does not affect its identity and market value, then why would one try to find a justification for not stating that it was cut later from a sheet?

In short, there is no honest justification for knowingly not stating at sale that a card was cut later from a sheet.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Complete and utter nonsense. Do you even know how paper gets made you dumb f*?

I do, grew up in a paper town, have been in operating paper plants, and have another hobby where studying the paper something was printed on can make a huge difference in value.

The posted article was behind a paywall, requiring either a login from an institution, or paying 39.95 for it.

The introduction, which I could read was good.

Not all of the cardstock we deal with in prewar is cellulose, T206s have very little wood fiber.
Most papers used also have stuff to help the fibers adhere to each other outside of the bonds from that article. And coatings to make the printing better or easier.

All that can be affected by water, although the effect may not be a huge immediate problem. Long term, I'm less certain. Conservators of posters and other things do wet them to help them unfold and lay flat without damage. It's entirely possible they're trading very likely immediate damage for potential lower level damage in the future.

[rats60]

In 1987 Topps sold uncut sheets to a dealer with the knowledge that the dealer was cutting them up into singles. The reason was because Topps quality control was garbage. The hobby was asking for better condition cards and the dealer delivered to his customers. Are these cards now altered?

PSA graded sheet cut cards for more than a decade. They have graded 5,111 1984 Topps Nestle cards. Only 13 have been given an authentic grade despite the fact that these were only sold as uncut sheets.

The PSA 8 t206 Honus Wagner is just another sheet cut card, cut poorly and recut by Mastro. It was known in the hobby prior to the Southerby's Auction the card was sheet cut. Which card is worth more? A poorly cut Wagner in a PSA A holder or a peferctly cut Wagner in a PSA A holder? We all know that Mastro cutting the Wagner made it more valuable regardless of whether it received a number grade or not.

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by rats60

In 1987 Topps sold uncut sheets to a dealer with the knowledge that the dealer was cutting them up into singles. The reason was because Topps quality control was garbage. The hobby was asking for better condition cards and the dealer delivered to his customers. Are these cards now altered?

PSA graded sheet cut cards for more than a decade. They have graded 5,111 1984 Topps Nestle cards. Only 13 have been given an authentic grade despite the fact that these were only sold as uncut sheets.

The PSA 8 t206 Honus Wagner is just another sheet cut card, cut poorly and recut by Mastro. It was known in the hobby prior to the Southerby's Auction the card was sheet cut. Which card is worth more? A poorly cut Wagner in a PSA A holder or a peferctly cut Wagner in a PSA A holder? We all know that Mastro cutting the Wagner made it more valuable regardless of whether it received a number grade or not.

I don't have any problem with a grading company giving a number grade to a sheet cut card, as long as it is noted on the flip that it is sheet cut. The issue is about tranparency and providing relevant information to potential purchasers. More information is never a bad thing.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

LOL yes, the scholarly article is wrong and every scientist who studies cellulose fibers as well, but a scamming mathematician knows it all. :rollseyes:

The fact that water is used in the process to create paper and setup the structure of the fibers, doesn't prove using water isn't alteration. In fact, it proves the major effect water has on them in breaking down the bonds.

You truly are incredible. You are either really dumb, or seriously grasping at straws to defend your shady practices. Just take a hike you scamming piece of garbage. I'm done with you. If the best you can do in response to scientific proof of alteration is "that peer reviewed study is nonsense," then rational discussion with you is useless. Welcome to the first spot on my ignore list.

It has nothing to do with how "correct" that article is. The question is whether or not it's relevant to the discussion regarding the alteration of sports cards.

If you apply your same logic more broadly, then you'll end up having to demand that all collectors wear white gloves at all times while handling their cards because to do otherwise would result in card "alterations". Thus, making them "fraudsters" if they fail to disclose having touched their cards with their bare hands when selling.

Don't believe me? Here, check out this article from Goucher College on how to handle paper artifacts and how the oils from your skin damage paper fibers (much more so than water, I should add). [I can point to articles written by experts too!]

https://faculty.goucher.edu/eng330/b..._old_books.htm

Here's an excerpt:

Originally Posted by Goucher College Article

Contact between human skin and any organic “substrate” (i.e., cloth, wood pulp or linen-based paper, or animal skin) will contaminate it with skin oils, bacteria and sweat. The oils darken the page and make it harder to make out faint marks, and the bacteria and acids will dissolve the substrate entirely, destroying the book from the corners and fore-edge inward.

But why stop there?

If water "alters" cards, then all sellers from humid climates must include a disclosure in all of their listings unless they want to be guilty of committing "fraud" by your absurd definition.

Surely, you are aware that storing paper in plastics can deteriorate (alter) the paper as well, right? Plastics outgas over time, causing damage to the paper fibers, breaking them down and causing them to deteriorate. A quick search with Google AI yields the following:

"Plastic can have several effects on paper, including:
Deterioration
Vinyl products, which are chemically unstable, can emit a strong smell as they degrade. This smell, called “outgassing”, can aggressively deteriorate paper."

The reality is that the oils from our hands and the plastics we store our cards in (especially those older 9-pocket pages/binders and top-loaders) are far more harmful and damaging to our vintage cards than water is. Literally everything we do with our cards "alters" them in some way if applying your standards for the definition of what it means for something to be "altered".

If you want to have a discussion about card alterations, then you have to establish a useful definition of what it means for a card to be "altered" in the first place. And that definition has to be within the context of the hobby and how something affects its value, not in some quantum physics context regarding the entanglement of atoms or some other random bullshit definition that doesn't apply (you're good at those). Also, that definition has to be applied consistently and must hold up to scrutiny. Otherwise, it's useless and gets us nowhere. For example, you can't say it's not an alteration to remove wax from the back of a 1986 Fleer basketball card but it is if you remove wax from a 1972 Topps baseball card. And you can't say that it's OK to soak a 1948 Leaf card in water to remove it from a scrapbook but it's not OK to soak a 1948 Leaf card in water in an effort to flatten it out because it's warped after being stored in a humid climate for 50 years. And if spilling some tea on a card isn't considered an alteration, then neither is rinsing off that tea with some water.

At the end of the day, if you did something to a card that cannot be detected and which leaves the card in a state that is indistinguishable from a similar card that has not had that thing done to it, then you have not "altered" the card in any meaningful sense with respect to how something affects its value in the market. If a card can be cracked out and resubmitted 100 times and it passes grading all 100 times, then its market value has not been affected by whatever it is that you did to it. Regardless of whether that thing was handling it with oily fingers, wiping off fingerprints from oily fingers, storing it in plastic for decades, plucking off a stray piece of fuzz from the edge, removing wax from the surface, flattening out a bent/lifted corner with your thumb, breathing on it, licking your finger to wipe off a smudge, dropping a piece of rice on the card and then promptly removing it, soaking it in water and letting it dry flat, etc. Everything we do to a card "alters" it per your definition. So that definition doesn't work. You need to try again. You're losing your jury. But I'm sure you're used to that.

[Smarti5051]

Seems like a lot of words used to justify alterations be accepted in a hobby which specifically looks down on alterations. If you repair a car in a bad accident to be "as good as new," does that mean it was never in a crash and you can advertise it as such? Or can you just roll back the number on the odometer to erase 100,000 miles if the car visually looks good? At the end of the day, if the person purchasing the card would want to know about an alteration and you do your job so well that they can't detect the alteration, that is and always will be fraud if it is not disclosed. Your efforts to try and find common ground will be impossible, because every argument you make tries to justify hiding a fact that the buyer (and collecting community) believes is material.

I also think your argument that touching a card without gloves "alters" the card actually cuts against your central premise. The point of assessing condition is to see what the current state of the card is after a myriad of "challenges" the card has (or could have) faced over its lifetime. From printing defects, centering, gum and wax stains, and packaging at the supplier, to dings to the corners from shipping/stocking, to who is opening and how much care they have treated the card with when they open the pack and store the card. The older the card, the more impressive a higher grade example. This is what gives the card and grade its scarcity. If a card got to skip all of these challenges and was simply created after the fact to be pristine, it is the equivalent of a lab made diamond and the hobby values it as such, unless a fraudster omits the material information in a transaction.

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by Snowman

It has nothing to do with how "correct" that article is. The question is whether or not it's relevant to the discussion regarding the alteration of sports cards.

If you apply your same logic more broadly, then you'll end up having to demand that all collectors wear white gloves at all times while handling their cards because to do otherwise would result in card "alterations". Thus, making them "fraudsters" if they fail to disclose having touched their cards with their bare hands when selling.

Don't believe me? Here, check out this article from Goucher College on how to handle paper artifacts and how the oils from your skin damage paper fibers (much more so than water, I should add). [I can point to articles written by experts too!]

https://faculty.goucher.edu/eng330/b..._old_books.htm

Here's an excerpt:



But why stop there?

If water "alters" cards, then all sellers from humid climates must include a disclosure in all of their listings unless they want to be guilty of committing "fraud" by your absurd definition.

Surely, you are aware that storing paper in plastics can deteriorate (alter) the paper as well, right? Plastics outgas over time, causing damage to the paper fibers, breaking them down and causing them to deteriorate. A quick search with Google AI yields the following:


The reality is that the oils from our hands and the plastics we store our cards in (especially those older 9-pocket pages/binders and top-loaders) are far more harmful and damaging to our vintage cards than water is. Literally everything we do with our cards "alters" them in some way if applying your standards for the definition of what it means for something to be "altered".

If you want to have a discussion about card alterations, then you have to establish a useful definition of what it means for a card to be "altered" in the first place. And that definition has to be within the context of the hobby and how something affects its value, not in some quantum physics context regarding the entanglement of atoms or some other random bullshit definition that doesn't apply (you're good at those). Also, that definition has to be applied consistently and must hold up to scrutiny. Otherwise, it's useless and gets us nowhere. For example, you can't say it's not an alteration to remove wax from the back of a 1986 Fleer basketball card but it is if you remove wax from a 1972 Topps baseball card. And you can't say that it's OK to soak a 1948 Leaf card in water to remove it from a scrapbook but it's not OK to soak a 1948 Leaf card in water in an effort to flatten it out because it's warped after being stored in a humid climate for 50 years. And if spilling some tea on a card isn't considered an alteration, then neither is rinsing off that tea with some water.

At the end of the day, if you did something to a card that cannot be detected and which leaves the card in a state that is indistinguishable from a similar card that has not had that thing done to it, then you have not "altered" the card in any meaningful sense with respect to how something affects its value in the market. If a card can be cracked out and resubmitted 100 times and it passes grading all 100 times, then its market value has not been affected by whatever it is that you did to it. Regardless of whether that thing was handling it with oily fingers, wiping off fingerprints from oily fingers, storing it in plastic for decades, plucking off a stray piece of fuzz from the edge, removing wax from the surface, flattening out a bent/lifted corner with your thumb, breathing on it, licking your finger to wipe off a smudge, dropping a piece of rice on the card and then promptly removing it, soaking it in water and letting it dry flat, etc. Everything we do to a card "alters" it per your definition. So that definition doesn't work. You need to try again. You're losing your jury. But I'm sure you're used to that.

Reducing an argument to an absurd result might be useful for thought experiments but useless in real-world applications like this one. No, we can absolutely draw a line between nominal effects on cards by normal handling and intentional major alterations to the card's condition with intent to make it more valuable. Just like the fraud discussion, intent matters. When you handle your cards without gloves, are you intending to alter them to enhance value? Here's a hint: you're not, nor does that modification enhance its value, but decreases it. You are making yourself look foolish.

[campyfan39]

In many of your opinions, anything done to a card is "altered." So, a gum stain or wax stain from the factory is altering the original, unstained card. It's poor logic. I'm with snowman on this.

Also, who knows how many sheets have been cut and are already in the market? Did the factory intend for the sheets to be uncut? Of course not. I don't have enough money to own an uncut sheet nor the desire. But I see no issue with making them into cards, which was the original intent of the manufacturer. It's called "baseball cards," not baseball sheets.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

Reducing an argument to an absurd result might be useful for thought experiments but useless in real-world applications like this one. No, we can absolutely draw a line between nominal effects on cards by normal handling and intentional major alterations to the card's condition with intent to make it more valuable. Just like the fraud discussion, intent matters. When you handle your cards without gloves, are you intending to alter them to enhance value? Here's a hint: you're not, nor does that modification enhance its value, but decreases it. You are making yourself look foolish.

And the same is true when you soak a vintage card in water. There is no intent to defraud. The intention is to clean the card. And just because you assert that as fraud doesn't make it fraud. That's the problem with your bullshit arguments from earlier. You said it's fraud to clean a card and not disclose it (and here's the good part) BECAUSE the only reason one would do so is with intent to defraud. LOL. Circular reasoning at its finest. And, of course, complete horseshit.

I've got news for you. Most people who clean their cards do so simply because they want them to look nicer or they want to remove something that is stuck to the card, typically some sort of major eye sore like tape or scrapbook paper. Most of the cards I've cleaned or soaked aren't even listed for sale, and the most valuable ones likely never will be. In fact, the majority of the cards I've soaked in water wouldn't even be worth the cost of grading. I soaked them simply because I wanted them in my sets and my OCD hates warped cards. When I soak a card in water, I do it for myself because that's how I prefer them. It has nothing to do with tricking some third party despite your absurd accusations.