I am around from the start and also the card cleaning had never been a thing in the past.
We did have altering from the start but it was: using ink on the blue borders to get rid of the white spots.
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LOL cards with a small spot would get a 10 those days, so no altering needed.
I have been grading (and will untill I run out of cards) my own fresh pulled very very very large collection.
I think I found a new buyerspool overhere. I donât alter, I donât clean, never did, never will.
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How often does card cleaning/altering actually turn a 8 â 9 or 9 â 10?
From all the stuff Iâve seen itâs mostly cards in the 4-7 range that get a small bump with this practice, but not to NM/M or M standards.
Maybe Iâm wrong tho.
There was also a trimmed venusaur, âtrimasaurâ. They appeared probably around 2017-18. This is when sports guys started to take more notice of PokĂ©mon.
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I thought you didnât care lol, also the law doesnât care very much about morals, they do care about fraud though at the end of the day weâre discussing why we distrust trimming and the altering of cards which relates to some being a little cautious of buying graded cards, so yes in a way most of this conversation relates to the main topic in one way or another from my perspective anyway
I think the overall point is that altering of cards has gone up at a really fast rate, compared to 15 years ago where an altered card was rare to find, I think the general point is that itâs getting more and more stressful to buy and card (graded in this case) because of how much scamming there is these days, 20 years ago nobody would take the time to create high quality pokemans fakes or alter cards because there wasnât much money in it, but now that thereâs money in faking and altering cards people are doing it, why do you think the hognus Wagner was altered in the first place?
I mean i get what ur saying
Now its even stressful to have a pokemon package with fedex for fear it will be stolen
But in some ways its getting better
PSA themselves are really good now at managing this whole thing. They cant detect wax though but according to the ceo they will soon have the technology to detect it even if its invisible to the eye
I think the thing that scares me is not having old scans.
The guy who famously bought ultra clean psa 10s, then regraded the same card over and over, but used the discarded 10 labels on 8s and 9s and sold them as tens.
He did this to many thousands of cards and it went on for yearsâŠ
And whos to say hes the only one who was clever to that?
I appreciate the new certs, i want those original scans.. even if it means i pay a slight premium
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4-7 is still a large value bump, but those are the ârepairedâ cards like dent removal.
In my experience the âpolishâ doesnât do anything.
It canât actually remove scratches or print lines as some people think it can. I bet they havenât actually used it and honestly itâs just misinformation.
The people who are saying it CAN do it, are giving free marketing to Kurts Card Care lol. Itâs not a magic cream. Honestly itâs a crap product.
That being said, there is significant repair work being done by a lot of people, such as humidor repair to remove dents and creases which is impressive but of course shouldnât be able to pass a grading company and should 100% be declared as ârestoredâ.
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People will literally do anything but actually look at the card that they are buying.
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Another issue, is that the damage caused by âsoakingâ cards in a solution can sometimes not appear until AFTER the card has been graded.
See an example here;
The chemical in the solution the card is soaked in damages the glue, and when the card faces a change in atmosphere (ie humidity) the holo layer begins to peel from the card stock.
When the owner purchased the graded card, there was no such damage. After having had it stored in his collection for some weeks he noticed the issue.
See another example here, the card was sent to PSA without the peeling, was graded in an 8, and in QC it was pulled as it was peeling, eventually marked as authentic.
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Iâve never seen this with the polish as it dries super fast.
I never have seen tcg cards been soaked. This was fairly common with certain old sports cards though.
It could have been from using a humidor system to remove dents.
Another reason why BGS is goated 
I was literally talking about this with my collectors friendâs group and I stated the same that I would prefer old certs because I canât stand card cleaning and the culture behind it. Iâm against card cleaning and I do consider it as an alteration and people doing so are only there for the profit. Same as scalpers. No one knows the effect these products will have in the future and also polishing may remove parts of the card surface. In comic books, clean and press is the norm when grading and itâs pretty accepted in the community and I think it was not the case before. So I donât know why in PokĂ©mon things are different, why people just donât like the idea of their cards to be restored. Itâs an interesting topic to debate.
Youâre a bit of a broken record hey.
You moan about people praising PSA, but 95% of the time itâs YOU opening the conversation.
Donât forget it was submitted to BGS rather than other companies for a reason⊠There are several instances of fake stamps etc being authenticated.
End of the day no company is perfect, just stop your silly propaganda and let them all serve their purpose for different collectors in the hobby.
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We just figured this out lol.
Card values were so low that it just wasnât worth altering card prior to 2020. You say that card values being low is a bad point, but I dont think you understand how low card values were. Every non charizard set prior to 2020 had like one $50 chase card and a bunch of $5 cards. Hell, Evolving Skies has more $$$$ in chase cards than the entirety of the XY block. Not to mention that outside of crystals, gold stars, 1st edition base, and a handful of Japanese promos; all of vintage was a sea of $50 to $200 PSA 10 cards prior to 2020. A PSA 9 base unlimited charizard, the most popular set card, finally hit $200 around 2018/2019. Nobody is taking on the risk of altering cards in any meaningful capacity for literal pennies on the dollar when the bottomless pit of valuable sports cards is looking you right in the face. Fundamentally, youâd be a bad criminal if you altered Pokemon cards prior to 2020. The most valuable pokemon card prior to 2020 was the same value as a cheap mid range sports card.
Comparing the history of card altering in sports
to the history of card altering in Pokemon is a bad counterpoint to the concern many have with newer vintage cards being altered. Sports was an established market with big money cards for decades before Pokemon was created. The sole reason altering exists is to make money, so any argument/debate should be centered around it.
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Also people live in this delusion they are not altering cards, itâs bizarre to me. Plus everyone spamming fire emojis, idk, I also been isolating myself from the hobby these last years.
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90% of what I say on this forum is tongue in cheek. You should know that by now, we speak on IG dms on occasion.
50% of my slabs are in a PSA slab.
All companies have authenticated fake stamps.
What I was saying above is that BGS picked up on the fact that he used polish which is hard af to do.
With regards to the ray, I doubt it was dipped in anything and was probably given a humidifier treatment.
I think this thread could use more claims without evidence.
On the other hand, successful triple bait 
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