Standards of Practice

A voluntary standard for anyone who works on other people's cards for money.

Every established conservation field has one of these. Paintings, textiles, archaeology, architecture — each has a written code its practitioners agree to work by. Card restoration has never had one, which is why the same arguments keep happening in public with nothing to point at.

This is that document. It is adapted from the professional conservation codes (see Where this comes from) and cut down to what actually applies to cardboard.

Tip: There is no board, no exam, and no one to revoke anything. That is not a weakness to apologise for — it is the honest situation. This works the way it works in every trade without licensing: people say they follow it, customers learn to ask, and reputation does the rest.

The three terms

Everything below hangs on the disclosure triad. Full definitions live in the Glossary; the short version:

Tier	Meaning
I — CONSERVATION	Adds nothing, removes nothing, leaves no trace. Grader-safe.
II — RESTORATION	Adds and removes nothing integral, but could leave traces under loupe or UV.
III — ALTERATION	Material added or removed, or original surface irreversibly changed.

Intensity moves a card between tiers, but every process has a floor. A low-pressure cold press is conservation; the same press run heavy is alteration. A heat press is tier II at its gentlest — there is no setting that makes it conservation. This is why the Conservation Tech Sheet records a severity numeral on each process rather than just a checkbox, and why some rows offer 2 3 with no 1.

Three bands:

Band	Processes
Can reach tier I	cold press, humidor, dry clean, water clean
Floor of tier II	heat press, humidity stack, steam, tool work, solvent clean, gloss polish, scratch reduction
Always tier III	delamination repair, rosin press, rebacking, scratch fill, UV gloss, corner rebuild, recolour, trim/recut

General obligations

These apply to all work, at every tier.

1. Work within your competence

Take on only what you can actually do. When a card needs something beyond your skill or your bench, refer it out or decline it. Learning on a customer's card without telling them is not practice, it is gambling with their property.

2. Examine and document before you touch it

Map the condition at intake, before any intervention. The intake record is the only proof of what was already there — and the only defence you have when a customer says a defect is new.

3. Written scope and consent before you start

The owner should know what you intend to do, what it might achieve, what it risks, and what it costs, before you do it. If the plan changes materially mid-job, get consent again. See the Restoration Service Agreement Template.

4. Record what you actually did, and hand it over

Not what you planned — what happened. Processes used, at what intensity, in what order. The record travels with the card. A card whose history is documented is worth more than one whose history is a rumour.

5. Never misrepresent — the card, or yourself

No false or misleading claims about a card's age, origin, condition or authenticity. And none about your own work — the processes you used, the materials you used, or the results you get. Overstating a method is the same offence as understating a defect.

6. Disclose subcontracting

If someone else will do the work, say so before you take the card. Quietly forwarding a customer's card to a third party is common and nobody has named it. The owner consented to you.

7. Don't foreclose future work

Prefer methods that leave the card open to later treatment and later examination. Reversibility is mostly unavailable on cardboard, so this is the practical substitute: don't do something that makes the next person's job impossible.

8. Doing nothing is a legitimate outcome

Sometimes the right answer is leave it alone. A card that will be damaged by intervention should not be intervened on, and saying so is service, not a lost sale.

9. Work safely

Know the hazards of your materials and equipment, and tell anyone else they affect. See Safety Guidelines.

10. Advise on aftercare

Tell the owner how to store, sleeve, handle and ship the card so your work survives. A treatment undone by a bad sleeve was a waste of both your time.

Obligations by tier

Escalating. Each tier carries everything above it.

11. Tier I — Conservation

Light humidification in a humidor, low-pressure cold press, dry clean, distilled water clean — all run gently. Nothing added, nothing removed, no trace left. Grader-safe, no disclosure owed.

The record still gets made. No duty to disclose is not a licence to keep no history — tier I is where most work lives, and a documented card is the whole point. Fill in the Conservation Tech Sheet the same as for any other job; it is the identical sheet, just without a disclosure line hanging off it.

12. Tier II — Restoration

Caution: Disclose on sale is suggested. Especially if asked or work was extreme.

Heat press, humidity stack, steam, tool work, solvent clean, gloss polish, scratch reduction — plus anything from tier I pushed past gentle. Nothing integral is added or removed — no cardstock, no ink, no fill — but the surface finish can be affected: a gloss polish buffs the front coating, and a solvent clean can lift it. It can show under a loupe or UV.

13. Tier III — Alteration

WARNING: Disclose before transfer — not on request, not if asked. Before.

Two ways in. Run any tier II method heavy — a press that flattens the gloss out of a card adds nothing and removes nothing, and it is still alteration. Or reach for one of the eight that are tier III however gently you work: delamination repair, rosin press, rebacking, scratch fill, UV gloss, corner rebuild, recolour, trim/recut.

Alteration is legitimate work. Plenty of cards are worth altering and plenty of owners want it done. What is not legitimate is letting an altered card enter the market as untouched.

The tier is about disclosure, not permission.
Tier III work isn't fraud. Selling tier III work as untouched is.

See Altered Flags for how the grading companies detect and code this work.

Professional conduct

14. Conflict of interest

Be especially careful where restoration meets appraisal, authentication, grading, or dealing. Restoring a card and then valuing it, or grading work you or your shop performed, or quietly flipping cards you were paid to treat — each puts your judgement and your income on the same side of the table. Disclose the overlap, or don't take the second role.

15. Comments on another restorer's work

Don't volunteer adverse judgement on someone else's work in public. If a card is being damaged and silence would let it continue, that is the exception — and even then, comment on facts you have personally seen, not on hearsay or a photo someone sent you.

If it is worth raising, raise it with the person first. Public callouts are the last step, not the first.

Adopting this

There is nothing to sign and no one to register with. If you work to this standard, say so, and link here so people can read what you mean by it.

Tip: Customers: ask. "Which tier is this work, and will I get a record of it?" is a fair question and any competent restorer has an answer ready.

Where this comes from

The structure and most of the obligations are adapted from the professional conservation codes, chiefly:

CAC / CAPC — Code of Ethics and Guidance for Practice, Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property and Canadian Association of Professional Conservators, 3rd ed., 2000
AIC — Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Practice (1994) and Commentaries to the Guidelines for Practice (2008), American Institute for Conservation

Neither organisation endorses this document. Their codes govern cultural property held for preservation; cards are a traded commodity in a graded market, so several of their obligations were rewritten and several were dropped as inapplicable.

The largest deliberate departure is detectability. Museum codes require that restoration remain detectable to a future examiner, because there is no external authority to detect it — nobody grades a Rembrandt. Cards have grading companies whose business is detection, so that obligation is discharged here through disclosure and documentation rather than through deliberately visible workmanship.

This page is released under CC BY-SA 4.0, matching the Conservation Tech Sheet. Fork it, adapt it for your shop, sell it if you like — but modified versions must stay open under the same licence and credit back here.