A Colored Pencil Is Fooling PSA Graders (Pokémon Card Touch-Up, Explained)

Card doctors are shaving colored-pencil dust onto the whitened edges of worn Pokémon cards — coloring the wear back in so a beat-up card grades like it's mint. Why a pencil and not a marker? Marker bleeds and gets flagged as altered; pencil dust reads like normal wear and slips past the grader. The catch: once it's sealed in a slab, a clean touch-up is invisible to the naked eye. The honest inverse — pre-grade your own cards under magnification before you ever submit, and only grade what truly earns it. A label isn't a guarantee. #pokemon #psa #cardgrading #shorts