Is it ethical to alter cards and sell them without disclosure?
Let's see the sizes of the islands.
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Define altered please
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You missed a very important option.
Depends on who the buyer is.;):rolleyes::D |
^^^
alteration vs. restoration I choose the middle, as i didnt think restoration was illegal, as long its disclosed properly. Altering as for chemicals , is absolute disservice. The debate as for washing/soaking is another can of worms. Thats been asked probably a dozens times before. |
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I don't think there is any debate over whether one may sell a "restored" or "altered" card honestly stating the facts of its nature. |
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We are assuming that words mean a thing and not the opposite of that thing, and in this case the generally understood meaning of the word as it has been consistently used in the relevant hobby over the last three decades.
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Yeah, a lot of gray area of things that are pretty dissimilar when you just say altered.
How about one group that encompasses improving creases, wrinkles, dents, bumps. One that encompasses "cleaning" (whatever that is)...would love to hear what that actually means if it's something beyond wiping a card down with something moist. One that is trimming. One that is adding color. What other categories would there be? Anyone who has ever soaked a card and later sold without disclosing should probably answer "yes" from the limited 3 choices above or be considered at least some degree of hypocrite. |
The attempt to reduce the justification of doing something to a card that improves its appearance and not disclose it because a grading company is ok with it, is bs...to me. We saw on BO, a few years ago, examples of millions of dollars worth of cards that went into holders that were recolored, trimmed, etc etc. Were the alterations so great that they were missed or were the people submitting the cards given special treatment?
I find the argument to defer to the grading company once a card passes grading to be entirely dismissive of the responsibility of the submitter/seller to not disclose what was done. And again, if one truly believes they are not doing anything wrong then why not just let people know? Especially if you are in the camp where you feel nobody cares. |
I am positive there is reasonable disagreement on edge cases.
Surely, if we dove deep enough, we could find a case of "robbery" where two reasonable men disagreed on if that particular case did or did not constitute robbery. Nonetheless, as reasonable men, surely we could reasonably say whether we are for or against "robbery" as it is generally understood by English speaking people to mean and has consistently been used. While polls have 100 character limitations, even if I wrote a 300 page treatise we could surely find an example not covered and then use that as the angle to hem and haw. |
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Going forward I might suggest polls be cleared by a lawyer...:D
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All reasonable people are well aware that almost any other comparable issue of behavior or criminality can be answered in the common sense. I am positive that if we had had a dialogue for long enough you and I could find an examplar of something like "robbery" that we disagreed on if that case constituted. Nonetheless, we could surely both answer the very obvious general question right off the bat that we are against the practice of "robbery", as English speaking people who know what the word means. |
I agree with all that said to specify what is considered altering.
Bob |
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Options 2 and 3 are likely to include false positives in terms of what you are trying to get at -- people who think cleaning is not an alteration, would not disclose it, but are going to say they think true alterations should be disclosed.
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It is being used in the common sense way it has been used in our hobby for three decades or more. I understand and expect the exact list of people who will use this as the angle to hem and haw and avoid clicking yes, but literally nothing will satisfy - there is always one more edge case. As a common sense person I can say I am against X crime or think Y is fine, as it is generally understood by people who are not pretending they suddenly don't know what a term they have expanded long passages about before means, without going over every possible case of it to categorize if that exact case counts. It should be incredibly obvious that there are edge cases of disagreement; if it was something many of this boards members and friends did not profit from, people would be able to understand this. |
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Even without a 300-page treatise, maybe just 5-10 examples of alterations (or activities that don't rise to the level of alterations) would be helpful. |
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If you did anything to them, prior to selling, and don't disclose doing so, and then whatever you did was discovered by the purchaser you sold them to after the sale, or anyone else thereafter, frankly, I would say that is unethical. I prefer lower grade, raw cards so as to enjoy my cards and not worry about this sort of thing. |
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Full disclosure: I've never altered a card. Except for the one time when I bought a 71 Bazooka Numbered, which was hand cut. The cut job was bad, so I cleaned it up. And I would argue that alteration is completely acceptable, without needing to be disclosed to a potential buyer. It's still in my PC, so I haven't sold it. But I will have no problem someday selling it without disclosing my hack job to the buyer. |
If you define "altering" as wiping off fingerprints/wax/gum residue or such, then I think that is acceptable without disclosure.
If you define "altering" as trimming/pressing/recoloring, then I think that is not acceptable. |
I thought polls were anonymous?
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As should be expected by anyone who reads my numerous posts on the topic, I voted "No, it is unethical to not disclose alterations."
But I don't think this is the point of disagreement that matters most. The more important line in the sand is what qualifies as an "alteration" to begin with. Most people (and ALL grading companies) do not consider a soaked or properly cleaned card to be altered. Same with flatting out a bent corner. |
I feel like it's reasonable to set some parameters here. If you don't want to define what you mean it can be agreed that creasing a card is altering it. But I would also agree that maybe there's no need to disclose you personally creased the card if you can see the crease in your scan.
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Also depends on the card. If I get a 1961-63 Post Cereal card with a fuzzy edge and trim it straight, I don't consider that to be a sin against the hobby, since the cards were hand-cut in the first place. Same with other hand-cut issues (strip cards, Hostess panels, Bazooka, etc.)
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You can draw a sharp line at changing the size of a card that came from a factory and that was not distributed direct to consumers with dotted lines or borders or perforations. Personally, I'd also draw a sharp line at adding any chemicals to the card, including water. To put that in context, I'd concede that soaking probably doesn't do longterm damage to some cards, and I probably own soaked T206s without knowing it. But we add shades of gray when a card cleaner decides to use tap water or starts messing around with Kurt's secret, proprietary "water-like" formula. Frankly, I wouldn't trust a stranger with a financial interest in changing a card's appearance without detection to be the final arbiter of what an objectively acceptable soak looks like. Travis' comments here illustrate the point. Letting card doctors decide what counts as doctoring is like letting the fox guard the proverbial henhouse. |
As other have said, there are many definitions of alterations in the hobby. Here are a few that I can think of:
Soaking a card glued onto something else like a scrapbook: Acceptable Soaking and pressing a card to remove wrinkles: Not Acceptable Trimming a hand cut card such as a strip card: Acceptable Trimming an oversized factory cut card: Not Acceptable Erasing a pencil mark from a card using a standard eraser: Maybe? Erasing a pen/ink mark from a card using chemicals: Not Acceptable Adding color to a card: Not Acceptable Rebuilding corners: Not Acceptable Re-backing a skinned card: Not Acceptable |
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Yes, Snowman's is that the word means the exact opposite of what the hobby has meant for 3 decades+, that a crease is alteration and not his work on a card. If I say I define a tree as a rhinoceros, that doesn't make the tree a rhinoceros. His definition is not the ignorance the others claim whenever convenient, but that it means the exact opposite. |
Yeah, I agree with soaking. I don't see the alteration aspect of soaking a card. The card wasn't glued to anything when it was issued, so to me the alteration was gluing it to something. If you're able to soak it apart from what it was glued to, the card is in its original form and I don't see how it's been altered.
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That and whenever people demand absolute answers based on ambiguous criteria, my contrarian streak tends to run amok even more violently than usual. |
It not only obviously is unethical, it is illegal.
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I wonder if it would be acceptable to "alter" the options as follows:
Option 1) Yes, it is perfectly acceptable and ethical to sell an altered card without disclosing this to the buyer Option 2) No, it is unethical to not disclose the alterations |
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Isn’t the only thing that matters to the people who move the market, ie make our cards worth thousands if not more dollars, have the card in a numbered PSA holder? That's all that matters to the people who move the market. It’s not right but it’s the way it is.
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Personally, I think this is pretty funny. Believe it or not, this is actually a myth. It's not a thing. Another thing people refer to as pressing is smashing out creases with a spoon. This actually is a thing and it damages cards. This IS an alteration, and it's something I won't do. It is perhaps worth mentioning that this is also something Kurt does not do either. This will get your cards flagged as altered stock by PSA and SGC. Don't do it. Putting a book on top of a card while it dries to ensure it dries flat is not what is meant by "pressing" a card. |
As other have said, there are many definitions of alterations in the hobby. Here are a few that I can think of:
Soaking a card glued onto something else like a scrapbook: Acceptable Soaking and pressing a card to remove wrinkles: Not Acceptable Trimming a hand cut card such as a strip card: Acceptable Trimming an oversized factory cut card: Not Acceptable Erasing a pencil mark from a card using a standard eraser: Maybe? Erasing a pen/ink mark from a card using chemicals: Not Acceptable Adding color to a card: Not Acceptable Rebuilding corners: Not Acceptable Re-backing a skinned card: Not Acceptable Glchen, You forgot a common one.......Wiping off an wax/gum stain. |
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It's the pressing flat of corners or wrinkles that I think most here think of when "pressing" is mentioned. I don't think your definition is the only one. Most don't really consider smashing a card to increase the size and then trim some excess as being any kind of rampant problem...I've never seen anyone here particularly worried about that. But a soaked card now has bends if you don't intervene and you are pressing those bends out to make it seem "normal" again. Spoon smashing for a crease/wrinkle probably compresses the card stock and Kurt does not do that, I don't believe. But essentially (and a simplified way of thinking of it) he "soaks" the area that is creased or wrinkled and massages it flat for drying. |
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Thought it was on that 87 Fleer Jordan... But maybe this is different than smashing out creases with a spoon? |
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Full disclosure: Previous to today, I had never heard of a tortillon, although I would have expected that if prepared correctly, they could be succulent. |
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And, also in NJ (but sourced from MPC 224.2), a person commits a crime of the fourth degree if, with a purpose to defraud anyone, or with knowledge that he is facilitating a fraud to be perpetrated by anyone, he makes, ALTERS or utters any object so that it appears to have value because of antiquity, rarity, source or authorship which it does not possess. That’s NJSA 2C:21-2. Not sure how you dodge that if you’re not disclosing alterations that cause a buyer to pay more for a card than they would. And as to value, I think we can agree that, say a legitimate PSA 8 T206 Cobb or 33 Goudey Ruth isn’t a helluva lot more expensive and rare than an A graded card |
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I don't think there is a single other crime we could do this for that would considered in the same way here.
For example: If I asked a different board if murder was ethical or unethical, there would be a few jokey troll responses of ethical and everyone else would say unethical. It might spark an interesting debate about where, precisely, the line between murder and self-defense lies, as is often vague still in many jurisdictions and on which reasonable people may disagree. That would not cause a significant number of posters to claim, well golly, they can't answer the question because they aren't sure if case Y that someone might reasonably consider not self-defense really is and should be termed self-defense. Nobody would pretend they don't know what the crime is. Or let's say it was "is it ethical or unethical to claim false deductions on your taxes to lower your tax bill?". A sizable number of people would honestly answer one way or the other this time, a more split vote but a majority against it. It might spark some interesting side debate on if certain stretches are truly a 'false' deduction or might be seen in another light and what falls within the textual basis, exactly. People would not pretend that they cannot give an opinion because they might disagree on a particular edge case. Nobody would pretend that they cannot understand the issue or the ethic raised. Of course, it is only within a context where a sizable body has a financial interest in exactly this kind of act, that we pretend it is difficult to understand the subject or render any opinion. You are all experienced card collectors and you know perfectly well what is under discussion. For no other crime discussed in a body that is knowledgeable about the subject pertinent to the crime, would you pretend to be unable to be for or against the concept because X might disagree in Y exact scenario. It is this kind of sophistry that is really the main point - when a side must resort to arguing no conclusion can be made because there is always an endless array of possible scenarios still to go or against disclosing a fact, it is a clue that they are doing something wrong. Is it really so hard to just disclose with honesty? No, it's not hard. It doesn't pay as well, and so some will be commendably honest and admit it and a greater number will wring their hands and pretend they can't figure it out, while a majority don't have a problem stating the obvious. |
Those questions are clearer. Yours is more like the open ended question, would you do anything unethical? Of course most people would say no, but given the ambiguity, you're going to get a lot of false positives (or maybe it's false negatives here) because one man's unethical conduct is another man's ethical conduct.
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You invoked taxes, so let's bore everyone to death by poking at it with my own little taxable tortillon. As a CPA, I will tell you that there are a lot of shades of gray out there when it comes to deductions. While there are some areas that are clearly black and white, most of the action is in the gray, and discerning the precise shade of gray, and whether it makes sense to go there. You may be shocked to learn that as a tax preparer, my professional standards only require that there must be at least a 40% chance of prevailing in tax court for me to sign a tax return as the preparer. 40%!!!! I would posit that similar ambiguities abound when it comes to cardboard. While I'm happy to agree every day of the week and twice on Sunday that trimming is out, I'm not as convinced when it comes wiping off a fingerprint. I've never done it, but it doesn't seem all that terrible to me, and certainly shouldn't be considered as tantamount to murder. But I guess I'm probably a little too prone to seeing too many shades of gray, and being willing to play in that gray when appropriate. |
Much of life is a gray area. Even murder to an extent, but I am not going to bring up a very divisive issue.
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You are surely literate enough to realize that the socratic companion was used, not a claim that trimming a card or pressing an edge is tantamount to murder. I am often derisive of the general reading comprehension level, but we are surely not that bad here! Nonetheless, thank you for making my central argument for me. While there are likewise large areas of gray and the edges are fuzzy, you are somehow sill perfectly able to render your opinions about these other subjects. |
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You all could perfectly answer the formatted question, limited to 100 characters, for another crime, and we would all be aware that if we examined 100 cases we would not agree on all of them, but none of us would pretend that we are not cognizant of the central subject and issue. |
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I would say the third was you falsely trying to pretend I made an argument that in any way whatsoever related altering a card to committing murder. The fourth was my response implying that you are fully capable of reading and you know that was a blatant mischaracterization. |
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Of course the island of defenders (same people who likely defend PWCC's actions) will say otherwise. |
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