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Posted By: E, Daniel

Hey T206, i think it is important that someone have a direct go at this question or statement of being re card alteration, as it is one you have made regularly - and quite fairly, through every thread that has come up the last year or so regarding the topic:


"......... to me it is very simple:

(a) If the alteration is 100% undetectable, what you don't know can't hurt you (or the resale value); and

(b) If the alteration can be detected, then if it is in an SGC holder, SGC will give you your money back.

Why does the card collecting world need more? The only problem, in my opinion, is if you have a lot of money invested in cards not graded by a company that offers such a money-backed guarantee."



So,

I would begin by asking why we collect vintage cards to begin with.
Foremostly, I would hazard a guess, is the very story of baseball itself, of the people and players whose life stories were the very fabric of the game at its inception. Indeed, in many ways they were the game, and living at a time when larger than life characters were to be enjoyed and celebrated - unlike today when they are eschewed for being selfish or detracting from the group efforts of the ultimate acheivement, so called 'winning'. Winning what, I'm not quite sure. Certainly not my heart, as the game today holds as much interest for me as a block of 10 week old cheese.

And then would come the cards themselves.
How many times have you looked at your 60 plus year old cards, just savouring everything about them. Their shapes, the color, the image, the images behind the image, the time stamp on the back or on the flip that catapaults you to that different age, and most importantly i think, their imperfections. Isn't it the rounding of corners, or nicks in them, or staining, or rubs, or toning, or smell, or feel, or texture, or thickness or thinness....I mean they captivate you. And they got to you by going through hands untold, and stories untold, and now they are yours. And everything that they are screams survival, so you love them.
And then, through all this texture, you come across a card you know, except his/her face is different. She's still sharp around the edges, her surface and image jump off the surface, unbent and feels solid, and you just marvel......how? how did she make it? and there are all the same untold stories, but they seem all the more amazing becuase it just seems so incredibly unlikely, truly, a miracle in the paper world. And again, everything she is screams survival, so you love her.
And in the midst of all the variations that exist for every card in every condition, every single one of them is a story. A brilliant, never to be truly known but fun to daydream story, and you are the custodian.

So, when you grab a wipe to clean off a booger, you remove a story. When you take bleach and whiten, there goes a story again. Trim an edge, and 60 years vanish. And, when you press and remove a wrinkle, it is as though to me you are trying to remove the laugh lines around my wifes eyes, as each one was got by love and incredibly story of survival and triumph, and seperates her life story from every other beautiful lady on the earth. I don't want shiny new cards in holders that will survive into the next millenia, and worse, I don't want to create new looking cards from stock that is so much more beautiful in it's exact form. If you make every card look like a 3 to a 7, where are the stories?
That isn't license to disrespect perfect looking vintage cards. If they survived that way naturally, its a truly incredibly story. And it isn't license to have a go at people who spend a whole lot of dough on them. Thats just pathetic and arrogant and mean spirited.

So, perhaps you don't care if every card looks roughly the same. But we do. So we can collect poor/fair cards, or any others whose story appeals to us, and pass them along to someone else who understands as we do.

If it's just that what you don't hear or see doesn't hurt you, well that speaks very much to a societal view. Many can be happy if the world directly about them is nice, and not be overly bothered by others stories. And then there are people who feel and listen to the larger world around them and its problems and suffering, and wish not to block it out and would have the rules of behaviour look after everyone, even if they never meet them. And they know they can't save everyone, or stop the hurt, but that doesn't stop them wanting it so, and doing what they feel they can to help create that world.

So, please.
Don't judge what you truly seem unable or unwilling to understand.
None of what is trying to be achieved will ruin your collecting, unless your aims are to create 2006 topps cards out of 1909 stock. The efforts can only try and help, and preserve the best we can. And those trying to do the wrong thing, well, at least they will have opposition and need to weasel even further into the dark to continue their acts of greed and avarice.

Sincerely
Daniel Enright