Action comics 1 in heritage again!

[Ian_Levine]

Just to reinforce this hobby's irrational prejudice against restored or conserved collectibles? That rare and important books are going unconserved, or are having restoration literally ripped out of them, is tragic enough to those of us concerned about this branch of Americana. But to demand that CGC lend its imprimatur to gratuitously disparage books to no one's gain is borderline immoral.

 

 

Oh so true.

I love restored books.

In a hundred years time, they'll be the ones that survive.

All your precious "unrestored" low grades, if not restored in time, will literally fall to bits, and all you'll be left with is an "unrestored" mylar full of little flakes of brown shredded paper.

Comic books in the 1930s and 1940s were not designed to last a hundred years. They were made to be read and thrown away. My New Funs were falling apart till I lovingly re-pieced them back together with acid-free ph balanced, calcium buffered Filoplast-P archive tape. Now they might stand a chance of lasting the NEXT hundred years.

Long live restoration.

Susan Cicconi rules !!!!!!!!!

[Aman619]

pish tosh, Ian!

 

why cant we take out the next generations of truly archival paper restoration tools and techniques and chemically treated tapes in 20 years when our non-restored books begin to "fall apart"?

 

Which would YOU rather own: a book in original state in 2004 that MIGHT need work in 30 years? or some comic that's ALREADY a rag in 2004 and needed help to stay in one piece???

[comicparadox]

I think the books that get the blue lable are likely the ones where the glue and color touch didnt improve the books grade I tried to get an answer from Mark Haspel at a show but it seemed kind of evasive. Basically it boiled down too that many of the pedigreed Gold books had very minor work done and to put a purple lable on a Church copy because someone dotted it with a marker 20 years ago would pretty much kill the market for those books and any chances of CGC seeing too many of them getting slabbed.

 

In other words, if what Mark Haspel (CGC Grader) stated, the potential market for CGC was the determinant! In order for the CGC to have the ability to grade the books, the (unspoken) agreement was that Mile High/Edgar Church books that had had "minor work" would be listed with an Unrestored, Blue label and not the "Purple Label of Death" (PLOD)...I wonder if this applies to other "pedigree" books as well? Nonetheless, there are Mile High and Larson pedigree books encapsulated by CGC that do bear the PLOD, so the graders must have some "line in the sand" beyond which they won't go.

[garthgantu]

It would be nice to know exactly what that line is, and whether it has changed in the past 3+ years. It would also be nice to know that the line isn't going to move again in future, but no such information or promises are forthcoming.

 

Does anyone on this board think they could look at a GA book with a drop of glue on the spine or on a staple, or a book with "minor color touch" (assuming you can find these things in the first place, which can be challenging), and confidently predict whether the book in question will get the PLOD or not? That's what I think we're all asking for - some guidelines that enable the serious collector/dealer/investor to know how a raw book with any of these sorts of "defects" is going to be perceived by CGC.

[CosmicBob]

Does anyone on this board think they could look at a GA book with a drop of glue on the spine or on a staple, or a book with "minor color touch" (assuming you can find these things in the first place, which can be challenging), and confidently predict whether the book in question will get the PLOD or not?

 

Absolutely not. I'd be clueless.

 

Which is the usual state of affairs for me anyway, so no big suprise there.

[goldust40]

So historically many books from major collections up until the mid '90s were "touched up" a little because at the time such practice was considered excusable, or even fashionable. Which shows how (disclosure aside) our attitude towards "restoration" has changed so much since the '80s. I used the inverted commas there because these minor touch-ups were not done to conserve the book, or even necessarily enhance it, but to increase its' price.

 

You've got to differentiate between the need to genuinely preserve through restoration and the need to tinker needlessly with a high grade item for moneys' sake.

 

Nevertheless such evasion and fudging of the rules (as mentioned by yourselves) is at the very core of this problem. There are clearly different rules for pedigrees and distinguished collections, especially the major books found in them, even though lines in the sand have been drawn (somewhere). This boils down to history (as was detailed) and more importantly, politics and provenance of the comics in question.