Hi, I’m really new to TCG, but I was going through my old collection and found this card. A friend of mine told me it was pretty rare, so I sent it to PSA to get graded before Covid-19 hit. I recently got this card back with a “N-5 altered stock” grade (This includes, but is not limited to characteristics on the card that appear to show some form of alteration such as paper restoration, crease/wrinkle pressing or enhanced gloss). I’m just really confused because you can see in the images below that it’s pretty beaten up, but I didn’t do anything to the card. Perhaps someone would be able to shed some light on the situation? Thank you for any help and information you can give me.
It’s really hard to tell, but it could be this:
It looks a little like there could have been some blue bleeding into the layer beneath. This is often the reason I get that label is a little ink was placed on the card and PSA will deem it altered. Sometimes if you resubmit it’ll go through, but the better solution imo is put authenticate only and they’ll give it an altered authentic label if it’s the reason.
If it’s not there, I can’t see anything that sticks out to me and could just be an issue with PSA/something I can’t see through images.
Does PSA mark dirty cards as Altered (i.e. those dots at the back, which usually occur after a few years after handling the card by hand pretty often - I’ve had quite a few cards from my youth with dots like that)? You could try to clean those gently with a soft fabric before resubmitting perhaps?
Potentially yes, if they feel the dots were being used to mask damage. It’s a poor standard, but since the dots can easily be removed it’s a good idea to clean the card anyway.
