I agree completely with Freeman. Slabbing ruined sports card
collecting as far as I'm concerned. What originated as a response to
buyer anxiety about the true condition of mail- and internet-ordered
items became a wave of speculation and price inflation powered by a
symbiotic relationship between Greed and Fear. And the slabbing
companies were the biggest winners. They started springing up like
weeds, and nobody seemed to question their authority, experience, or
exactly who was doing all of this "expert" "unbiased" grading. (Some
reports: at least in the cards racket it's a bunch of indifferent
minimum wage-earning 20 year olds with magnifying glasses, and quotas
to fill) Half those companies lost all credibility before long when
people started realizing that their qualifications included not much
more than knowing where to buy stacks of lucite cases.
Slabbing of lobbies doesn't make any sense anyway, except to people
who might stand to profit from it. If a baseball card has a tiny ding
on one corner, or a comic has some light corner creasing and writing
on the back cover, the value can drop by 25-50%. In the case of a
lobby card that flaw has almost no bearing on the value.
I've bought a few slabbed stills--and I have no confidence that they
are necessarily authentic, or that the people grading them know
anything about stills.
Slabbing is great for lazy sellers, ignorant sellers, and greedy
sellers, and for baiting "mint only" speculators into feeding frenzy,
but I would welcome it like I would welcome the plague.
--Tom
On Apr 15, 2007, at 9:09 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Slabbing.
Bruce has offered up this subject so I'll bite.
Why slabbing for lobby cards? I am to understand for coins, comics
and trading cards, there existed a pervasive malaise in accurate
condition reveal. With internet sales exploding, for comics, with
multiple pages, a lot of sins were frequently overlooked and it
was impacting the industry. So if I recall correctly, Heritage
hosted a major comic auction and virtually all the items were
slabbed and results were impressive Slabbing established its foothold.
Now the company(ies) (are their still two?) who grade and slab
are a business.....and expansion of their supposed impartial
grading to other paper formats is critical for their long-term
foothold into the future. So just because they claim their is a
problem are we as sellers just going to drop to our knees and
rejoice that the Calvary is here to purge the cancer of egregious
inaccuracies in the sales of lobby cards?
For comics, fine, there existed a serious problem in accurate
condition and grading within their sales universe and most agree
it saved the biz. But I do not see anywhere that kind of
skullduggery or mis-representation with the majority of auction
houses or sellers present regarding movie material. So why jack up
one's "cost of goods" with the additional fees for grading and
slabbing,
never mind additional insured postage.
So if any auction house tries to instigate........I cannot shout
loud enough to not bid.........tell your clients to not bid as
well. If the prices don't deliver watch how fast they drop that
idea. Our business is not broke, occasionally a tweek here or
there is necessary but otherwise I think most people are happy with
how sales are conducted. If they are not they will go to another
that delivers to their expectations. Accepting the concept of
slabbing is akin to saying "were too indifferent and stupid to
police our industry .......we need third party
intervention.......take our hard earned monies ........we're lobby
card lemmings without conscience or backbone.
And besides, I like how I frame my lobby cards and window cards and
that doesn't include a a half inch thick rectangular slab with bar
scans stuck in plain view more appropriate for display on retail
racks for expensive Monster Cables not treasured lobby cards.
SLABBING= Irrelevant, unnecessary, an imposition, costly and
demeaning.
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