If this is Heritage's solution to the recent problems with high-quality
fake lobby cards, I am not impressed.
The Captain has nailed what many others have been only circling around
with this topic: Once something has been slabbed, you *cannot* open it
without invalidating the certificate. So, you have to rely on supposed
experts at the slabbing company -- who will not be real movie paper
experts, but only people who has seen a lot of other collectibles who
can say "this looks to be authentic to me and in beautiful condition".
These people will not be the kind of genuine movie paper experts with
the decades of experience who finally detected the hordes of Universal
horror fakes that had passed muster in this hobby for several years
before being found out at last.
Does anyone doubt that those extremely well-done fake horror cards would
have slipped past the authenticators at CGC? Maybe some of them did and
are now sitting in slabs with an official stamps of approval, waiting to
be sold? Once a lobby card is slabbed and unlikely be opened again,
anything that slipped by the CGC graders will probably *never* be detected.
Oh, I know... that's no worry because they *never* make mistakes at CGC.
Right... but let's hypothetically say they did make a mistake. How would
anyone ever know? How many collectors are going to break the expensive
CGC seal on the slab of their pricey and "authenticated" collectible
just to check and see if CGC got it right?
Bruce's prediction that there will be a big buyer love affair with
slabbing lobby cards may come to pass -- all of the above issues did not
stop slabbing from becoming popular in comics and other fields -- but I
don't see slabbing expanding up to the larger size posters because the
cost of the slab case would start to become prohibitive. Lobby cards
aren't much bigger than comic books and that's the reason they have been
able to do them.
At least with lobby cards, you are slabbing something that was never
meant to be opened and have the pages flipped through, like a comic
book. The slab case could be designed so it would frame up nicely and
display well and no enjoyment factor would be lost in viewing a slabbed
lobby card like there is when viewing a slabbed poster. But you won't
find me buying any.
-- JR
Captain Bijou wrote:
Question:
Would the recent plethora of fake Universal and vintage posters --
lobby cards and other sizes -- be detected if they were neatly
"slabbed" between clear plastic??
Wasn't it only after close inspection of the actual posters that the
deception uncovered?? If so, how could this be done if the posters
were sealed between plastic?? One would have to rely soley on the
expertise of the grader -- who, I assume, has no financial liability
should he/she be "fooled" by the authenticity of a poster.
Earl Blair
CAPTAIN BIJOU
www.captainbijou.com <http://www.captainbijou.com>
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