Repaired cards marked as Altered by PSA

Do we know the possible damage of what could happen after some time has passed on cards that have clearly been cleaned ? Any kind of chemical reactions that show visually the card looking like it did before or worse? Scary to think about what could happen to someone who does not know what they are potentially buying and years down the road start seeing there card showing damage and wondering why.

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Getting real tiring seing all the niche ways to financially abuse the hobby.

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Thank you for showing this lugia as i too saw this on ebay , and was thinking the same thing. The lighting that that Lugia is shown in from my knowledge, will show print lines if any in some way and from what i can see , i dont see them and im assuming the streaks are on the case

Submitters who alter cards should be banned from grading. Middlemen who submit altered cards or offer altering services should be banned from grading.

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If I’m buying blind off eBay for my collection, I will only buy older certs now.

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I agree with the idea of that, I think it def would be easiest on an individual submitter level. The only major problem is false-positives. I know Rusty (TCA Gaming) has had cards kicked backed from PSA marked as altered that were pack fresh. :man_shrugging: So that is the major hurdle.

I still think there would be ways to implement bans from PSA though. At the very least, if an altered card is over a certain dollar value threshold (like the the vintage cards in that video), the submitter should be flagged and put on a list, so that graders know they’ve sent in altered cards before, for all future grading.

The other problem is, people will just start submitting them through GameStop, like the guy in that video mentioned. Makes it harder for PSA to ban a middleman that big. But there are things they can do, I’m sure.

Sorry to burst all the bubbles here but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again

–> The polishes on the market do not remove scratches or “fill them in”. Nor does it remove print lines.

The product is absolutely crap.

But people who talk about it, such as in posts like this, claiming it’s some cream with nefarious superpowers (without them actually trying themselves) are giving it the BEST marketing - and encourages people to use it.

It only removes dirt, grime and oils that have built up on the cards over the years which does make the Holo shine more (and therefore somewhat tricking graders who aren’t looking carefully) - that’s it.

It won’t bump a card from a 7 with scratches to a 10.

Pack fresh cards are not polished, right? It’s almost always cards that are dirty, have existing surface issues or come from binders.

How can you tell if a card has been polished?

A) sometimes the cards have little white bits on it

B) they stink (the sniff test is real)

But I don’t think they hurt the cards (I have a couple binder cards I tried it on a couple years ago and they are fine) after being thrown in a cupboard in a binder. I have never submitted polished cards for grading.

The bigger issue are cards that are humidity treated, which alters the composition and structure of the cardboard - there are many cases of those cards getting graded and then falling apart in slabs sometime later.

That worries me and im curious if PSA would payout for it (I doubt it).

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this is why they just sell the kurt juice to other ppl and have them submit :rofl:

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Is this in reference to a specific post? I agree that no product can fill a scratch, as was previously said, but polishing does in effect remove scratches by reducing the surrounding surface to the same level as the scratch. You aren’t forced to bring the entire Holofoil section down to the level of the deepest recession, either, the image of the featured Pokémon can be quite fragile in terms of resilience to polishing.

Check this video out:

The immediate tell that the card was polished is the level of holofoil reflection.

That’s Kurt himself polishing a card with his solution, haha. Pokémon cards are resistant to skin oils and you will not see a result like that ^ just wiping your Hitmonchan down the way that any other person would (if they weren’t trying to scam). Humidity treatment is a bad idea as well, but IMHO it’s all equal behaviour and there’s no hierarchy in terms of card altering. That includes recolouring, too.

You’re either cleaning debris, as we have both said, or you’re altering. Kurt’s cream is an abrasive.

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I am sure they have an internal process to identify and ban people who submit altered cards. Maybe it’s a two strike process or maybe it’s more nuanced than that.

GameStop must obtain submitter’s details before submitting on their behalf. If an order is full of altered cards, I’m sure PSA can ban that user from GameStop middle-manning.

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You’re thinking it’s the same as some car polish.

It’s not.

It’s literally a cleaning agent, it’s just incorrectly called polish.

It doesn’t work as people who promote it (and discuss it in forums) say.

Also conflating humidor treatments and polish is nuts.

They are not even close to the same in terms of changing a card constitution.

I don’t think any of it is right if you’re doing it on cards you intend to sell.

Imagine the vault claims that will come when people see the soaked repaired card they bought has bubbled and degraded after the initial vault scan

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It won’t if it’s been polished.

Humidity treated? Yes. Definitely a chance at bubbling especially if ex era.

I don’t think most comments are suggesting cleaned cards are likely to 10, but you can go to the overgraded card thread and find plenty of examples of 10s with scratches and print lines. Not inconceivable that people cleaning cards are trying to trick graders and get 10s by making the cards look better

Most cleaned cards would probably hit a BGS 9.5, though.

Nice try

This is the main issue. Graders spend 20 seconds on a card. Although any light will show scratches and print lines just the same.

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It’s an abrasive… the formula is a secret to hide that fact, haha. This isn’t some Mr. Krabs vs. Plankton level play.

Plus, the cotton swabs he supplies are an abrasive by definition, too.

It’s polishing compound.

Polishing a card and flattening wrinkles with a humidor are both forms of card altering.

“No intent to sell” is about as legally binding as, well, there’s no point in humour here since people are being scammed left and right with this stuff, through cards from people with “diamond hands” as they say.

Please don’t try to flip your Raichu.

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I can see you’re new, but this has been discussed at length many times before.

There are very real examples of humidity treated cards falling apart in slabs not long after grading.

That’s a real issue.

The polish is useless product with marginal benefit but thankfully doesn’t seem to damage the card (on the couple raw cards i tested it on).

I suggest you try the product you are promoting (without intending to).

The Raichu is a pack fresh Holo I pulled from a pack a couple years ago. I can tell you there is no “Holo layer reduction” on it, nor has it bubbled or changed in any way. It’s been literally in a cupboard as part of my shadowless binder set.

The print lines are still very very apparent.

Thanks for your concern.

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What surprised me a lot was all the positive comments under the restoration videos. For some reason the algorithm decided to throw a bunch of them into my feed and outside of E4, people think it’s a good thing.

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A few months ago I noticed a batch of WoTC holos I bought from somebody smelled awful. Not your typical cigarette or wet cellar stench, they smelled almost like a chemical sewage. Now it could of been a natural occurrence or it could of been kurt’s cream, who knows lol. It’s hard to describe what they smelled like but Im glad someone else mentioned something.

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