I think the point Scott and others are trying to make is most Pokemon cards were damn near worthless in 2010 so there would have been little to no point in “cleaning” them prior to 2016ish.
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YES you 1000% are not alone, I find myself searching for fine scratches for validation as bizarre as that may sound. I have expressed a few times on here how much it concerns me. People suck.
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Moving beyond the low quality triple bait post, the normalization of altering cards (and that’s really what it is, not cleaning) amongst newer collectors is another thing which contributes to the disconnect I feel between collecting as it was and how it is now. I think a lot of people are feeling the same as evidenced by It's getting increasingly difficult to find joy in this hobby. It seems like optimization at all costs and a lack of respect for originality has really infiltrated society recently, the parallels between short-form content/social media and AI here are pretty difficult to ignore.
I would hope PSA and other grading companies will take a stand against this behavior and ban the accounts of people who submit large amounts of altered cards or at least develop more technology to detect it.
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This . . . especially when paired with the accessibility of cheap, mint cards at the time. Why restore damaged cards to grade PSA 8’s when you’d still lose money on them? Add-in the fact that the majority of grading volume was coming from fewer than 100 individuals who were primarily collectors and not businesses. It was a much, different situation back then.
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Its not even bait because I am genuinely concerned
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There was no evidence of a card polishing culture prior to 2020 nor are there examples of pre-2020 cards I’ve ever seen where there is evidence of polishing. Now there is a culture of doing this stuff, literal influencers that exclusively do alterations (and hide the certs ofc), there are kits you can buy that are well known and there are plenty of examples of cards where you can visibly see the polishing juice.
No one is saying there was absolutely zero card alteration pre-2020 but all the people who were around then can attest, the number of bad actors was minimal simply because the financial incentive wasn’t there.
This applies to all things. Resealing packs and boxes, fake cards on Japanese marketplaces, obvious market manipulation tactics. These were rare to non-existent pre-2020 and basically limited to just 1st edition base cards.
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I feel that the overwhelming majority of people who are pro card cleaning are only pro card cleaning because they love the idea of a $10 played card becoming a $150 card.
Its just for $$$$ plain and simple. If it wasn’t just for $$$$ they’d be more then willing to disclose a card they’re selling has been “restored”. They don’t because it hurts the $$$$ gain. Little to no morales and little to no respect/love for the medium they supposedly enjoy.
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This is a great point. Keep in mind that all the people who alter cards also hide the cert numbers because they know that if the cert numbers were public they would get less money when they sell the cards. It’s a very instrumental gain thing where the ends justify the means.
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This is why I am afraid of new cert vintage 9 and 10s. Its just so much discussion of first-hand cleaning/people openly discussing it and the guy I sold a dented card to, immediately tells me he sent it in for a service to get cleaned and to remove the dent…
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I have a pretty strict definition of alteration/cleaning and am really disgusted by the whole thing.
MTG altering (e.g., recoloring, trimming Beta corners to appear as Alpha cards, rebacking cards, etc.) has been around forever, but because most of the valuable cards were non-holographic, altered cards were always discernible for those with knowledge. It disturbs me that many (most?) altered holographic Pokemon cards are going through grading companies undetected.
Just due to statistics, I know with certainty that I must own at least one altered card. I think most collectors do as well these days, unless you pulled and graded all of your cards or only have cards graded from a decade ago. Because of this, I have considered on more than one occasion to sell all of my PSA 9s and 10s and to go back to binder collecting with played condition cards. At least then I will know that they are definitely not altered.
Until then, I will try to ignore the truth, and enjoy the cards for what they are. Owning polished cards doesn’t destroy the emotions and memories that I have made with them, nor does it destroy the beautiful art that draws me to them. In 2025, ignorance is bliss for Pokemon card collecting. If I think too much about it all, it depresses me, and I refuse to ruin my enjoyment of a (mostly) wonderful hobby over things that I can’t control.
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Man this thread has exploded, triple has been an expert at baiting today
On the topic of altering cards, yes this practice has been around for quiet a while in sports cards, if you need proof look up sports card trimming, I’m not sure if this was a practice done for financial gain 10+ years ago though, it was to risky of a financial move as there was no guarantee that you could sell the card due to the more limited market verses sports cards which had a bigger market.
Here’s how I see altering cards:
If I put the Mona Lisa in a frame and tuck it away in a safe place away from UVs that would be considered preserving it right? But if I take the mona Lisa and because the eyebrows are faded, I paint them back on would you still call that preserving? Or would you call that altering the original piece?
Now let’s turn the mona Lisa into a Pokemon card, if I put the card in a sleeve and hide it away from UVs that would be considered preserving it right? But if I take the card and because the holo is scratched and I fill in the scratch with a solution that wasn’t originally intended to be there would you still call that preserving? Or would you call that altering the original piece?
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Well said and totally agree. How can we enjoy life when worrying about something always. If anything that’s torture. Never ever thought about all this card restoring being a huge issue while I collect cards and being the age I am will forget about it by the time I wake up in the morning.
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Seconded. A thread on this would be majorly beneficial I think.
All in all those are fair points. However, this practice is almost entirely done by a seller at the detriment of a buyer. We are talking about a Dark Alakazam holo going from a sub $100 PSA 8 to a $1000 PSA 10. Nobody doing this cares about anything other than money, Nobody is trying to restore or preserve anything here. Nobody is doing this for the love of the game lol.
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And I’m just here as it seems to be the right thread for dumping links of random card “restoring” business in Japan. No, I don’t think they started before 2020.
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I understand this and I have always agreed with this argument, the point I was making was actually supporting this idea, a lot of sellers and people who are restoring cards use the argument that they are preserving the card, that’s what I was going after, it doesn’t contribute to the card it only takes away and I don’t understand why people who aren’t sellers support it
Want to know something crazy? Its understood that the FIRST GRADED PSA CARD EVER,
The T206 Honus Wagner card with cert 0000001 is proven to be altered
Altering cards has been here since the very beginning
It’s actually harder to alter cards today than in the past. PSA graders had significantly less technology to work with, and Pokemon in particular was a side note to them. The cards were low in value and the company didnt take it seriously
Once i purchased an old cert sabrinas gengar that i saw as a regrade candidate.
In my pregrading i noticed blue ink on 2 edges! It was clearly recolored. But it bothered me how easily this got passed the graders
Something like this is hard to do/get away with these days. Psa uses technology in the prescan that supposedly easily picks up on this and also the lighting that graders have is far superior and makes it easier to detect this as well
Do i think cleaning, aka removing dirt and polishing are more prevalent today? Yes
But im much less concerned about this than i am with someone going into michaels and color matching the blue or getting precision tools to cut 0.3mm off an edge..
Cleaning is at least gray area. Straight up coloring in edgewear is not even defendable. And this is much harder to get away with today
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Yeah and the guy who did it was also sentenced to federal prison. I’m speaking generally when I say this but I don’t think people fully understand that adding or removing material from the card to inflate the grade is simply fraud.
I think it’s a sad reflection of the lack of principles or accountability in this hobby that we can collectively overlook literal fraud as if it’s part of the culture.
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I understand what ur saying but the topic isnt if altering cards is morally justified
The thread is about new certs being altered and my point is old certs are altered too.
Some bad points were made by many in this thread saying psa didnt care about pokemon and that card values were low so u needed to get a 10 to even make money
Thats exactly the reason to alter cards… you needed the ten, and psa didnt care so the altering went under the radar