Erasing Gamer Grime from Magic the Gathering Cards

Do you have white-bordered cards that look dingy? Are they covered with grime? Yeah, me too. There's something completely obvious that I've been wanting to try for a while, but never got around to it. Today was the day. I used an eraser on some cards to clean them up.

Here are before and after pictures of the process. I used Revised Hypnotic Specters that I've had in my collection for, well, since Revised came out. They look okay, but dirty.

I used a soft eraser. This is not a normal pencil eraser. I got it from an art kit. It's soft and doesn't crumble. It feels like plastic or clay. It's the "Hi-Polymer Eraser" made by Pentel. It claims to be non-abrasive and latex free. So, there's that.

Here are the cards before I started on them with the eraser. This is the infamous "before" picture.

Here's a close-up before picture of the card on the left, the one in the worst condition.

It's dirty around the edges. This is from a combination of shuffling it without a sleeve and "gamer grime." You know about gamer grime. It's the stuff that collects on your hands from food and drinks and sweat. It's on the tables at your LGS that never get cleaned. It slowly transfers to your cards and builds up over time. Eventually, it starts to look like your cards have black spots. This is more obvious on white-bordered cards, but it's happening to your black-bordered cards too.

Here is the same card after erasing around the border the first time. I only used the eraser on the border, quickly going up and down using short motions, turning the card so that the angle of my hand and the eraser stayed the same on each border. The eraser is soft enough that it didn't feel like it was doing anything, but check this out.

The card is immediately whiter and there are less black spots around the border. This might be difficult to see in the pictures, but it was obvious in the normal light. So, I hit it with the eraser again. Same technique. It looked like this.

Not all that different this time. So, I used my fingernail and lightly went over the edges to see if the remaining black spots were stuck there or if the eraser just didn't have enough oomph to get them off. After that, I erased the borders again. it looked like this.

Almost all of the black spots are gone. The corners still look dirty and there are a few black spots left. As best as I can tell, they are in little pits or grooves in the surface of the card. It's likely possible to remove these as well if you had a small enough tool. I felt like it was an improvement, so I did the same to the rest of the cards. They were already in better condition than this one was to start, so I expected similar results.

These are the same cards in the same order. This is the infamous "after" picture. The card borders are brighter, whiter, and have less black spots and grime on them. The card that was in the worst condition (on the left) looks much better but still a bit yellow compared to the others. Better than it was though. Here's a rough before and after comparison.

The before picture is on the left. The border is noticeably darker and filthy with gamer grime. The after picture is on the right. The border is noticeably whiter and nearly gamer grime free. Same card after about two minutes of erasing.

If you do this to your precious cards, start with cards you won't be heartbroken over if something bad happens. The eraser I used was super gentle. Start there and see if you like the results. If you figure out a way to clean up the corners, let me know. Good luck!