Call it an error and you could probably sell for a premium
What sort of thing were you expecting to hear? âHey Scott, I have these altered/cleaned cards, want to buy them from me?â or âHey Scott, Iâve just cleaned my cards, would you mind submitting them to PSA for me?â
Just because you was there at the time, it doesnât mean that would would know about shady stuff happening. In the same way, I wouldnât expect every Hollywood actor in the 90âs to be aware of what went on at Epstein Island. It doesnât mean that Epstein Island wasnât a thing.
The only counter argument that makes sense is that Pokemon cards werenât worth enough to bother with cleaning.
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Iâm just expecting confirmation that someone was cleaning PokĂ©mon cards.
And thatâs exactly what I and everyone who was around then have been saying, it wasnât financially worth it to clean cards.
Same thing in Italy, authorized dealers clean cards.
Every card that goes through them is cleaned, almost all recently graded BGS/PSA cards have been cleaned.
Unfortunately, it has become the norm in Italy.
People all think itâs ok to clean because they donât care, they are just in it for the money, they are speculators and not collectors.
Sometimes BGS identities their cards as altered, but they just crack the slab and resubmit it until it gets graded. (lately, out of every 10 cards they submit, 2 or 3 come back as altered)
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Good to know that bleach, caustic soda and hydrochloric acid are not excluded. 
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Just found this gem from back in 2015 whilst scouring the web for old posts about card restoration.
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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 âcleaningâ 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 thatâs 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 8âs when youâd 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 Iâve 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 wasnât 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 $$$$ plain and simple. If it wasnât just for $$$$ theyâd be more then willing to disclose a card theyâre selling has been ârestoredâ. They donât because it hurts the $$$$ 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. Itâs 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 dentâŠ
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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 doesnât 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 canât 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, Iâm 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.
Hereâs 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 letâs 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 wasnât 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 thatâs 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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