Sean wrote, "So Bruce, were there enough follow-ups to your message that you
will give us your views on slabbing, or are you out looking for apples?"
Actually I was out BOBBING for apples. Does anyone here even know what that
means without looking it up? Even when I was a kid it was probably 20 years
since anyone had "bobbed" for apples at a Halloween party. There are a million
expressions and rituals like that which are dying a slow death and will surely
virtually vanish within another generation's time.
But back to slabbing. Here is my opinion Sean. I am against slabbing of lobby
cards, for two reasons.
One, I don't want them made "untouchable". Unlike comic books, I don't care
about the fact that they are shut away for reading or research purposes, since
you can still see the entire front and back (like a stamp or baseball card).
And it is not the "smell" of a lobby card on the morning, either, although
there IS SOMETHING wondrous about an absolutely mint 75 year old lobby card
that DOES make you want to hold it unsheathed.
But the problem with encasing them is that holding them in your hands is a big
part of doing a condition description, especially when you are looking for
really expert restoration. I have looked at more lobby cards than any human
being alive (with the likely exceptions of Morrie Everett and Mike Hawks) and
it really makes a difference if I look at a card in a mylar or plastic sleeve
or outside the sleeve when I am doing condition, and so I always remove it,
even though that takes lots of extra time.
I feel that slabbing them will make it far easier for even experts to miss tiny
flaws or tiny expert restoration.
Which brings me to my second objection. I don't trust the grading services, for
two reasons. One, they are substantially owned by the major auction houses and
dealers, and those same major auction houses and dealers regularly submit items
to the very grading service they own to be graded (and often re-graded) and to
say this is a "conflict of interest" is a massive understatement! It is well
known that many major auction houses and dealers regularly buy graded items and
are able to have them "up-graded". That COULD be because they were
"under-graded" the first time, or it COULD be that the grading services are
more lenient on their submissions, and the ownership issue is enough for me to
feel this is clearly very unhealthy.
But suppose the grading services were completely owned by independent people
with no connections to major auction houses and dealers. I still see real
problems. First, the grading service that gives the most lenient grades would
surely get the most submissions (especially once word spread of how lenient
they are) and there would quickly be major "grade inflation", and that can
only end with virtually everything being graded as gem mint!
Second, who ARE these people doing the grading? It has taken me 40 years of
examining lobby cards, the last 18 full-time, for me to feel that I am a true
expert on lobby cards. You are going to tell me that some pimply-faced kid can
learn what I learned in a month or so, and that their grading is as accurate as
mine (or any other long time expert)? And the employees of the grading
companies are likely under a lot of pressure to get a lot done each day, and
they may well be paid by how many they finish, something that surely is at odds
with careful scrutiny of every tiny flaw, and finding all possible restored
areas.
I have heard dozens of "horror stories" on the slabbing of comics over the
years (people who broke open slabs only to find undisclosed defects, etc, etc)
to know that there are real procedural problems in this business, whether they
come from honest errors or dishonest intentional "mistakes".
And of course, slabbing brings on the "investors". But that's a whole 'nother
subject, one for another day!
Bruce
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