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Hello All,
Peter brings up a great point that has been touched on briefly
in other posts and that is cost. Linenbacking/restorations charges run the gamut
in our hobby. I have several customers that use linenbackers that offer
"unbelievable" prices. Many of those same customers complain regularly about the
service or the length of time it takes to get a poster back. As most of you
know, I use Sylvia Locken at Precision Restoration. Not only does Sylvia give me
a 2 -3 week turnaround (never longer), she picks up my items directly from my
facility (that is a 2 hour drive for her), and returns them done on the highest
quality materials available, beautifully restored and on top of all that gives
me a great price that I pass on to my framing customers. If I have a
situation where a customer needs something back within a week, Sylvia
accommodates me. To me, that is incredible service. On average my cost is
about $20-$25 more than these "cut-rate" linenbacking specials. It is worth
every penny of that to me for all that I get. As Peter said, he has learned a
healthy lesson that everything has it's cost.
I recently had a customer who brought in a one sheet for me to frame
that he had just had returned from the linenbacker. As we tried to get it
out of the tube, not only was the fabric very coarse but masa paper had not been
used but some other form of paper that was cream colored. The poster had a few
bubbles in it where it had lifted from the backing. On top of that it wasn't
really restored, the linenbacker had just taken some colored pencils and lightly
touched up the fold lines. I pointed those things out and he said "Oh
well, I only paid $110 to have it done." Wow, I wouldn't have paid $50 to
have that job done.
There are so many talented linenbackers in our hobby. I
just did two pieces for Toochis that were done by Susan Olson. One was a 30x40
that Susan did an incredible job on, all the correct materials and the
restoration job was great. I have done several pieces recently that were done by
Jaime Mendez and the client was extremely happy with them and told me of the
awful shape they were in when he gave them to Jaime. I get posters to frame
that have been done by linenbackers all over the country, many of them
excellently done. I mention these two instances because the clients told
me that their posters were in horrible shape before the work was done. The work,
in my estimation, was so clean it was truly amazing. That's a lot, coming
from me, who has seen thousands of posters linenbacked and restored over 30
years in the hobby.
So, that's my two cents. Thanks for
listening.
Sue Heim
(800) 463-2994
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- [MOPO] My $.02 on Eugene Hughes P Molitor
- Susan Heim
