Card Improvment: Ethical? Yes or NO?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Removing creases for a dealer so he can sell it for a much higher price is aiding and abetting a fraud, plain and simple.

[slidekellyslide]

Boy would I love to see Dick's client list.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

Boy would I love to see Dick's client list.

No such luck, my friend. This is the hobby with no transparency. We don't know who card doctors work for. We don't know who submits the graded cards we buy. We don't know who consigns to auction houses the lots we bid on. We don't know which reported sales are real and which are bs.

[Peter_Spaeth]

In my opinion Barry we are already there -- it's anybody's guess whether a graded card has been altered in some way, and the more it's worth, the more likely the answer is yes.

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

No such luck, my friend. This is the hobby with no transparency. We don't know who card doctors work for. We don't know who submits the graded cards we buy. We don't know who consigns to auction houses the lots we bid on. We don't know which reported sales are real and which are bs.

Brings up an interesting question that I've asked before (without an answer of course)....why did the owner of GAI submit his Mantle card to SGC hoping to have the indentation removed?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

Brings up an interesting question that I've asked before (without an answer of course)....why did the owner of GAI submit his Mantle card to SGC hoping to have the indentation removed?

As we say in the law sometimes, the thing speaks for itself.

[barrysloate]

There are several reasons why cards get a low grade. Some have heavily rounded corners and layering. Those probably can't be improved and will remain as low grade cards.

Others have the appearance of Excellent or better, but they get hammered because of a light crease. Those will disappear from the marketplace. In time, every one of them will be processed to receive a higher grade.

I know this has already been done for a long time but a product like this, if aggressively marketed, will speed up the process of card alteration.

[V117collector]

The easiest way to finding out if using a “card doctor” is ethical or not is to ask board members if they’ve ever paid for an “alteration”. If there's no real replies to this simply question, we have an answer, not ethical (if not disclosing).


Obviously there are degrees when discussing alterations and/or repairs. The question should be which procedure/s would be consider by most collectors an ethical improvement?


eg: soaking cards for paper removal (distilled water)

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

No such luck, my friend. This is the hobby with no transparency. We don't know who card doctors work for. We don't know who submits the graded cards we buy. We don't know who consigns to auction houses the lots we bid on. We don't know which reported sales are real and which are bs.

But, we do, often, know who the really great guys are!