Well first off, we should all agree (whether we would personally do it ourselves, or whether we 'approve' of it or not) that what a person chooses to legally do with their own property is entirely up to them. If someone was fortunate enough to own a double-telescoping Darth Vader on a Palitoy 12 back and then chose to open it and burn the sabre, no laws have been broken. Most of us would think the owner insane for doing so, but if the figure was theirs they can do whatever the hell they like with it and it is absolutely none of our business.
Opening beater cards is again, the owner's business and no-one else's, although as has quite rightly been pointed out by others elsewhere, you can almost always obtain a mint loose figure for less money than a carded beater, so why the hell you would choose to do this with the overwhelming majority of figures seems a bit of a mystery... except of course that some people are idiots and others are wastrels, so I guess it's not such a mystery after all. But again, even though we personally might not dream of doing the same thing, what someone else does with their own property is up to them. It's fundamentally no different than someone hoarding multiples of the same item and then never selling them. I've seen collections with a dozen vinyl Jawas and a dozen boxed A-Wings. Some collectors grumble that this reduces the availability and pushes up the price of those items for other collectors (both of which are true, of course). Others argue that it is a highly selfish thing to do (arguably also correct), but once again in reality, even though the rest of us may detest the practice (and I'm certainly no fan of it), we simply do not have a right to complain about it.
Likewise, if someone chooses to touch up or bleach or lavish repro accessories on their own property, once again, it's absolutely none of our business. All this specious nonsense about 'harming the wider collecting community' is entirely irrelevant in these instances for as long as that altered property belongs to the individual that changes or destroys it, because they have no obligation to anyone else in that regard. The rest of us might not do the same and almost certainly won't like the fact that it has happened, but really, we have no right to bitch or complain about it..... until it is sold.
At that point it certainly does become an issue, and a very important one. Providing any alterations / reproduction parts or accessories are always fully declared when an item is sold, then everyone knows where they stand. The problem of course is that not everyone is honest in this world, and there are plenty of unscrupulous bastards who will happily try to pass off fakes, retouched and repro items as the genuine, unaltered article. These odious scumbags are cheats, liars and criminals and I have absolutely no time for them, and we should do our best to expose and fight them at every opportunity. It also inevitably leads to some of these items being sold on in ignorance by honest people who don't realise they are selling fakes.
So what's my point? That for as long as an item remains yours, you are perfectly entitled to do whatever you like with it and no-one else has any right to criticise you for it. However, due to our inability to control the actions of others, morally you should not then sell it on to anyone else, and certainly not without full disclosure of any changes made, and absolutely never to anyone you do not 100% trust not to sell it on again without full disclosure (which in most cases means never selling it, of course). It's a subject that makes many collectors quite irate (clearly), but it's also one that definitely warrants this debate and heightening the awareness of others both to the practices themselves, and the potential pitfalls of buying from untrustworthy sources.
