Initial review, filmed end to end. Stills in this batch were shot during recording. BALANCE. [01:23] The card is not flat: 'you can see a curvature to it', felt as uneven pressure across the fingers. That is what the press is for. HOLO SHEDDING - the finding that changed the plan. [03:25] Speckling across the top of the back, first taken for dirt. [04:50] It is the hologram itself coming off: 'they're getting on my finger'. That is why no aggressive surface work was attempted. HOLO BLEED - a card characteristic, not damage. [05:50-07:18] Holo runs the full length of the edge, 'almost like this card wanted to be a full holo but didn't make it'. Invisible to the naked eye apart from an edge shimmer. Called a first: 'I've never seen one so dramatic'. Deliberately NOT logged as a defect; its effect on value is an open question. BACK, overall. [13:18] Reads lightly played: micro-dents from something stacked on it, and fine back-and-forth scraping consistent with being moved on a rough unclean surface. [18:31] 'This card sat on its back a lot' - the front survived comparatively well. BACK, top left quadrant. [14:40] Surface damage, severity 2. The only zone given a severity on camera, and the only one recorded as a defect row. BACK, top right quadrant. [15:30] Gunk between the E and the M, with vertical scrapes running down to the Poke Ball. [14:40] 'I don't think a cleaning will do it well' - polishing was raised as a possible risk, not decided. RIGHT EDGE. [16:30] Paper is removed in one spot: 'there's really no fixing that. We might even not touch it.' [04:50] Separately, light edge wear on the top quarter of the front edge was judged easy to roll out. BOTTOM RIGHT CORNER, front. [17:36] Whitening with shallow depressions he called pot holes, from the card being worked back and forth on a surface. The depressions look fixable; the whitening around the edges does not. OTHER. [12:22] Dirt just above the Nintendo line, flagged to target during cleaning, and a black speck bottom right left for tools rather than fingers. No numeric zone grade was assigned. Work was deliberately paused for research on the holo bleed and the shedding before committing to anything beyond a light clean.

No defects recorded in this session (not a clean bill).

First cleaning pass, same recording, beginning at [18:31]. Deliberately conservative because the holo is shedding. [19:42] 'I don't want to wipe too treacherously on the holo' - the pass was kept light, judged by feel: the cloth grabs while there is still something on the surface and goes slick once it is off. [20:41] Wiped along the card's striations rather than across them, and rotated between passes to avoid dragging lifted material back over the face. [22:04] Scratches confirmed in the holo, one running off Mew's tail. Present before the clean, not introduced by it - he traced the lines first to be sure the pass would not damage them. The back reads visibly cleaner after the first wipe. No pressing yet, and no polish: that decision was left open pending research.

Edge work, corner work and press prep - the second recording of the same bench day, picking up where the first left off. METHOD. [07:13] 'Now that we have sort of what I would call a clean card, I want to start to do some repairs.' Edges rolled with the hot dragon-breath method, working corner by corner, adding moisture only where the damage was worst [26:15]. [01:42] The working principle stated out loud: 'always work towards the edges'. HOLO BLEED - DECIDED, AND KEPT. Logged at intake as a characteristic pending research. At [12:47-14:08] he rolled the right edge partly to hide it and found the front reads cleaner without it disappearing. By [28:38] the verdict is FOR it: 'I'm not sure if that holo bleed is not supposed to be there because it does make the card more vibrant... a non-non-value... I like it.' Still not a defect - now by judgment rather than deferral. A CREASE INTRODUCED BY THE WORK. [18:38] 'There looks like a little crease here that I created by rolling it out on another card... that one's my fault. And I believe this one that goes across here, too, also me doing.' Recorded because a work record that lists only the damage a card arrived with is not a custody chain. CLOSING ZONE WALK [28:00-29:38], front: Top left - no visible scarring; corner has raised whitening that cannot be worked; holo good. Top right - corner much improved, holo clean, no visible damage, 'scores pretty well'; the Pikachu pumpkin stamp reads great. Bottom right - doing well, holo bleed along the edge. Bottom left - 'looks really good'. CLOSING ZONE WALK, back - 'the story is told on the back': Top left - lightly played, with a dent that would not come out, 'a severity of a 3 or 4'. Logged at 4. He expects the press may still take it out. Top right corner - 'the most worn, presenting with scraping all over it', including across the face of the Pokemon. No severity spoken, so no row. Bottom right - the right-edge defect, 5-6mm long and about half a mm wide, missing a chunk of the blue, very visible to the naked eye. Called irreparable at [25:35] at severity 4. Bottom left - a further missing chip on the bottom edge toward the left. No severity spoken. OVERALL CALL. [28:00] 'This is definitely not going to come back anything higher than a 6 or 7, and all the quadrants tend to lean towards damage.' [20:25] 'This is not going to be a good grading candidate even if I was going to grade it.' The card is lightly played and is being restored to be kept, not submitted. [29:38] Into the clamp for a couple of days, then the reveal. No post-press grade yet.

No defects recorded in this session (not a clean bill).

Reveal and full 24-zone review, filmed end to end, after 72 hours in the press [01:43]. This is the first card in the system graded numerically at the REVEAL rather than at intake, so its zone scores describe the restored condition, not the condition it arrived in. At [00:40] he names the instrument: 'I think I found out that we have 24-point inspections going on here.' FRONT, 9.4. Top edge 9.9 [01:27]. Top right corner 8.5 [01:35], 'just got some whitening'. Right edge 8.9 [02:08]. Bottom edge 9.2 [03:06]. Left edge 9.2 [03:11]. The quadrants were walked and passed over without a number: top left [03:51] 'I don't see any surface damage'; top right [04:06] 'Oh, that looks good'; bottom right corner [04:44] 'very clean. Looks great'. Those are 10s by his own convention. Half-face calls 9.4 top [04:32] and 9.5 bottom [04:48]. HOLO BLEED - PRICED, AND STILL LIKED. [02:28] 'the whole front, we'll take a negative .2 on the holo bleed', immediately followed by [02:34] 'That also makes the card special. I love a good holo bleed.' Recorded as a face-wide 0.2 deduction and NOT as a defect, consistent with the press session's decision to keep it. BACK, 8.5, and the whole story. [05:12] 'So there we are. There's the truth.' Top edge 8.0 [05:35] with binding he had not seen before: [05:26] 'I don't know how I missed that.' Top right corner 7.8 [05:45]. Top right quadrant 7.6 [06:48], the worst zone for surface, 'somebody beat it up, scraped scratch it'. Right edge 6.0 [07:01], the lowest zone on the card, missing the blue layer. Bottom edge 7.0 [07:34]. Both bottom quadrants 8.6 [07:54-07:58]. Left edge 8.9 [08:09]. THE EDGE WORK IS CALLED AGAINST ITSELF. [06:04] 'Honestly, man, it probably looks like it did more harm to it than making it better.' Kept verbatim. A restoration record that reports only the wins is an advertisement, not a custody chain, and the press session already set this precedent by logging the crease he caused himself. OPEN WITH THE CLIENT. [05:29] 'We might have to do a second cleaning on this, depending on what the owner or client might want to do.' Amber has not been asked. Nothing further is done to this card until she answers. OVERALL, tallied by the system at his request [08:36]: 9.0, the mean of 24 zones with the faces weighted equally and the holo deduction applied once to the front. His own front half-face figures average 9.45 against a computed front of 9.44, so the method matches his arithmetic rather than replacing it. HIS SUMMARY. [08:23] 'it's a great binder copy, but if sent off to get this graded, I am afraid it doesn't come back a good story here.' [08:36] the card goes back to its owner 'in a new preserved and hopefully longer-lasting untouched scenario'.