Removing ALL scratches on my Zapdos with THIS simple technique!

Cracking device labs to get better grades. Episode 10. Team Rocket Zapdos. Got a PSA 9 here. And I saw some very light scratches that I think we can repair to hopefully get this to a 10. Got some new snip tools here. PSA 9 gives you about $350 of value. We can get this to a 10. We're looking at about 3,000. Pretty good uplift. Nice clean crack here. Let's take a look. See if we can figure out what's going on. Back looks pretty awesome. There's a tiny speck of white at the top of the card. Not a huge deal. But here are those hairline scratches I was talking about. Barely visible. So, let me bust out my microscope so you can see what these look like here. And I think these will be some of the easier scratches to deal with. Probably just one, maybe two passes with Curt's recovery will take care of all of these. Quite a bit of small scratches. This guy looks pretty pissed, actually. And they're scattered throughout. We got some on the left side, the right side. As I was having this under the microscope, I found this little dot. Did not see this before I cracked the slab. That is actually an ink dot. Figured it'll clean up some dirt while I'm here. We'll go around the border of the card, get rid of all that ink, the dirt, rather. I wish we could get rid of ink. We cannot get rid of the ink dot, which means that this probably is never going to get better than a PSA 9, but doesn't mean we can't make it look even better than it already does. I'm not just doing this for the better grades. These are my cards that I pulled myself many, many years ago. [snorts] So, there's some sentimental value here. Most of these I probably wouldn't sell anyway. So, making these look nice and perfecting them is rewarding in and of itself. Going on a round of Curt's recovery here. And I'm working in circular and perpendicular motion to those mostly vertical scratches. It might look aggressive, but this is very light. There's barely any pressure I'm using here. I'm going to remove all of that recovery material and hit it with a ground of the Kirks polish. Remelted my polish so that it's nice and flat. One thing I'm going be conscious of going forward is to not use too much recovery on my cards. If you guys watched my last video about some of my cards coming back as altered, that's probably why. I think I may have polished a couple of those too much. Removing all the polished material here. That's the other thing that might get you. And this thing looks I mean, it's pretty much perfect. Let's see what those scratches look like under the microscope now. This is the same area where all those three vertical scratches were. And you can see that they are all gone. No more scratches up by the wings or by his head either. So, we are looking good. I'm going to do a quick clean on the back using my new proprietary cleaning formula. It also works great on flattening cards. I'm working on a very long video. the worst card that I've ever repaired right now and putting my new cleaning formula to the test with crease removal. So, you guys look out for that one coming up next. This one was pretty straightforward, nice and easy. If you guys liked it, please be sure to subscribe and see you on the next one.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/slabrehab_yt/ Materials used: Kurts care kit https://amzn.to/3JnLaDd Kurts Recovery: https://amzn.to/4706s2O Can I turn a PSA 9 into a PSA 10? 👀 In today’s video, I crack open a vintage 1st Edition Rocket's Zapdos from the Gym Challenge set and attempt to polish, restore, and resubmit it to PSA for a PSA 10 grade. Using a mix of professional card polishes, microfiber techniques, and surface restoration tools, I’ll test whether it’s really possible to improve the condition of a graded Pokémon card — or if it’s just a myth. 📦 What’s Inside the Video: Cracking a PSA 9 slab safely Examining surface scratches Using card polish and restoration tools for clarity Re-evaluating the card’s centering, corners, and edges Flattening a curved card 🔥 Why Watch? If you’ve ever wondered whether card restoration, slab cracking, or PSA resubmission can pay off, this experiment shows the risks, techniques, and real results. Perfect for Pokémon collectors, card graders, and anyone into PSA, BGS, or CGC card flipping. 💬 Drop a comment: Would YOU risk cracking a PSA 9 to chase the 10? 👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications if you enjoy card restoration experiments, PSA submission tips, and Pokémon investment content. #PokemonCards #PSA10 #CardRestoration #Lugia #PSAResubmission #CardCollecting #PokémonTCG #PSA #SlabCracking #CardGrading #VintagePokemon #BaseSet #PSA9To10 #Collectibles #TradingCards