True, you are not inventing history by any means. There was a sale in indulgences, most famously done by Tetzel. We can answer that issue separatly. However, this question was whether The Church believes or has ever believed as doctrine that purgatory was a place. Whateve Tetzel said or did not say, he did not say that purgatory was a place. We in The Church simply do not know and will not make a firm statement on what we do not know
Well, from what I have read, Tetzel and company were, under orders of the RC authorities, selling deliverance from a PLACE called purgatory. As far as I know it was not portrayed as a condition, but a hellish but impermanent place of torment.