As anyone who has held restored Lobby Cards in his hands can tell, there is
a distinct feel to the paper once it has been "cleaned up". Even if no
pinholes were mended at all, if you run your fingers on both sides of the
card, you can tell right away the cards that had restoration work done on
them. I guess its the chemicals that are used in the cleaning up process,
that raise the burrs of the pulp/paper and give it that rough, "chalky",
unpleasant and distinct feel that says 'this sucker had some work done on
it'.
The funny thing is that detecting restoration of this kind can sometimes
only be detected by feel, not visually.
This alone is enough reason to forget about the idea of slabbing lobby
cards.
Zeev
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Hershenson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 10:38 PM
Subject: [MOPO] Slabbing apples and oranges?
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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