Why do Anti-Pressers HATE pressing?

[SquareChaos]

Most posts in this thread are unhappy at either theoretical situations, or the very ideal of an old book being pressed, thereby somehow reducing some indefinable quality it once had... however, that quality is completely undetectable.

 

I recently reread The Man in the High Castle, and there was a passage there that deals with this. One of the characters in the book deals in historical artifacts, and he is talking about the notion that some items have "historicity". From the book (and if you are not aware of the plot, this takes place in an alternate history where the Axis powers won WWII):

 

D[/color]ick]“ ‘Look at these. Look the same, don’t they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it.’ He grinned at her. ‘Pick them up. Go ahead. One’s worth, oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors’ market.’

 

The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.
’Don’t you feel it?’ he kidded her. ‘The historicity?’
She said, ‘What is ‘historicity’?’
’When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?’ He nudged her. ‘You can’t. You can’t tell which is which. There’s no ‘mystical plasmic presence,’ no ‘aura’ around it.’

 

‘Gee,’ the girl said, awed. ‘Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?’ ‘Sure. And I know which it is.’ “

 

[...]

 

“ ‘I don’t believe either of those two lighters belonged to Franklin Roosevelt,’ the girl said.

 

Wyndam-Matson giggled. ‘That’s my point! I’d have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it’s all a fake, a mass delusion. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself!’

 

‘Show me the paper.’

 

‘Sure.’ Hopping up, he made his way back into the study. From the wall he took the Smithsonian Institution’s framed certificate; the paper and the lighter had cost him a fortune, but they were worth it – because they enabled him to prove that he was right, that the word ‘fake’ meant nothing really, since the word ‘authentic’ meant nothing really. “

 

Not wanting to put words in someone else's mouth, but I would guess that the "completely undetectable" aspect of pressing is EXACTLY what causes some of the angst on the subject.

 

And I still stand by my quoted comment above. I respect people's feelings on this, but it's (most often) an existential concern when finding a high grade raw in the wild. It's psychosomatic, but that doesn't make it any less real for them.

 

Now, should a definite way of detection emerge... Then we might have a discussion.

[John Campbell]

I can see the pros and cons both ways. To me, if simply running a comic through a press can eliminate a few flaws that would otherwise be there for the rest of its life, I'd rather have the nicer looking comic and would gladly pay a bit for that. That's just my viewpoint. Of course, if the comic is truly being altered on some chemical or molecular level and might somehow age faster because of that, that could definitely be a concern. I've heard rumors of pressed comics occasionally "snapping back" to their original condition too, which could make selling a 9.4 in a 9.8 shell a bit of a harder sell if someone's paying attention to the actual flaws on the comic. Definitely a worthy topic of debate, wherever the ultimate consensus may lie, if one can ever be made.

[pickycollector]

the "completely undetectable" aspect of pressing

I know I am repeating myself again but that is so untrue. Pressed books are not "completely undetectable". As a matter of facts, most pressed books are detectable but pressers want us to believe that pressing is undetectable. Crack a pressed book or look at a raw pressed book and you will see something does not feel natural.

 

CGC cannot detect pressing with 100% certainty? Well, they certainly do not have any financial interest to detect it... especially since they did acquire Classics Inc. (read that tread again, it's a good one)

[kav]

What if other guys started putting 'book has been pressed' on slabs? Would this increase desirability of non pressed other guy books?

[SquareChaos]

the "completely undetectable" aspect of pressing

I know I am repeating myself again but that is so untrue. Pressed books are not "completely undetectable". As a matter of facts, most pressed books are detectable but pressers want us to believe that pressing is undetectable. Crack a pressed book or look at a raw pressed book and you will see something does not feel natural.

 

CGC cannot detect pressing with 100% certainty? Well, they certainly do not have any financial interest to detect it... especially since they did acquire Classics Inc. (read that tread again, it's a good one)

 

I haven't seen as many pressed books (especially older ones in high grade) as some others here, but I can rarely tell a pressed book from an unpressed one with any degree of certainty.

 

Someone should do a little test

 

If it turned out that it was more often than not detectable that turns a lot of the previous discussion on its head.

[pickycollector]

What if other guys started putting 'book has been pressed' on slabs? Would this increase desirability of non pressed other guy books?

Why would they do that? The "crack, clean, press, resubmit, flip" game brings a lot of business and profit for many people involved

 

[kav]

What if other guys started putting 'book has been pressed' on slabs? Would this increase desirability of non pressed other guy books?

Why would they do that? The "crack, clean, press, resubmit, flip" game brings a lot of business and profit for many people involved

Because people that want a non pressed book have then a way to get one confirmed

[SquareChaos]

What if other guys started putting 'book has been pressed' on slabs? Would this increase desirability of non pressed other guy books?

Why would they do that? The "crack, clean, press, resubmit, flip" game brings a lot of business and profit for many people involved

 

That game certaintly does bring profit, but it has to be a vanishingly small amount of overall business. Negligible in fact, at least so I'd guess.

[SquareChaos]

What if other guys started putting 'book has been pressed' on slabs? Would this increase desirability of non pressed other guy books?

Why would they do that? The "crack, clean, press, resubmit, flip" game brings a lot of business and profit for many people involved

Because people that want a non pressed book have then a way to get one confirmed

 

Perhaps it was pressed by some owner other than the one that slabbed it. Again, most of the arguments hinge on it being, basically, impossible to say with any certainy.

[pickycollector]

What if other guys started putting 'book has been pressed' on slabs? Would this increase desirability of non pressed other guy books?

Why would they do that? The "crack, clean, press, resubmit, flip" game brings a lot of business and profit for many people involved

Because people that want a non pressed book have then a way to get one confirmed

Books that are pressed in-house at CGC could easily indeed get such a designation but let's be realistic... it will never happen..

[Lazyboy]

At some point they will be able to tell if a book has experienced pressing-with a laser scan or something-then all those books will be reclassified as RESTORED.

 

Even the books with paper fibers that show evidence of pressure from sitting on the bottom of the stack for 30 years?

 

 

 

Pressing is NOT simply putting pressure on a comic book.

 

Pressing is a specialized process that uses pressure, usually in combination with heat and/or moisture, to remove or reduce the appearance of specific types of damage that a comic has sustained.

 

Simply leaving a comic in a storage environment in which it is under pressure is just as likely to cause damage as it is to improve its appearance.

[Lazyboy]

What rules did movie books change?

 

They introduced a volatility into the market that did not used to be there.

 

So what is the rule?

 

"Attention creates demand" is the rule you seem to be talking about, but the rule never changed. Only the way the game was played changed... very slightly.

 

Movies, TV shows, Gerber Photo-Journals, Wizard Spotlights, CharacterX reappearing in this month's new issue after a long absence or being used in a more significant role, etc. They all bring/brought new attention to specific comics, which often had relatively little attention previously.

 

The difference is the number of speculators who don't give a about the comic, only the money they think they can make from buying and selling it. The volatility comes from them over-inflating the supposed value thinking that they can find a greater fool, then dumping when the price shows any weakness. If it was only people who actually care about the comics buying them, there would be a much smaller increase and no frantic dumping on a slight decrease.

[RockMyAmadeus]

What rules did movie books change?

 

They introduced a volatility into the market that did not used to be there.

 

So what is the rule?

 

"Attention creates demand" is the rule you seem to be talking about, but the rule never changed. Only the way the game was played changed... very slightly.

 

Movies, TV shows, Gerber Photo-Journals, Wizard Spotlights, CharacterX reappearing in this month's new issue after a long absence or being used in a more significant role, etc. They all bring/brought new attention to specific comics, which often had relatively little attention previously.

 

The difference is the number of speculators who don't give a about the comic, only the money they think they can make from buying and selling it. The volatility comes from them over-inflating the supposed value thinking that they can find a greater fool, then dumping when the price shows any weakness. If it was only people who actually care about the comics buying them, there would be a much smaller increase and no frantic dumping on a slight decrease.

 

 

Yes.

 

Not that I don't see where Roy's coming from, but yes.

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

What if other guys started putting 'book has been pressed' on slabs? Would this increase desirability of non pressed other guy books?

Why would they do that? The "crack, clean, press, resubmit, flip" game brings a lot of business and profit for many people involved

Because people that want a non pressed book have then a way to get one confirmed

 

Perhaps it was pressed by some owner other than the one that slabbed it. Again, most of the arguments hinge on it being, basically, impossible to say with any certainy.

 

 

The argument that pressing can always be detected is a bad one. There are signs, some of the time, but mostly, you cannot tell if I have pressed a book or not. Can you tell marginal press jobs? Of course. Can you tell good press jobs? Mostly no.

 

By the way, that includes books pressed by CCS before they were CCS. I pulled out several that I had pressed in 2009, and they don't look like they were pressed at all. Over the intervening 7 years, because the books weren't done "properly"...and not only do they not look pressed from a "you can detect pressing" standpoint...they don't look pressed from a "all these flaws are back" standpoint.

 

[VintageComics]

What rules did movie books change?

 

They introduced a volatility into the market that did not used to be there.

 

So what is the rule?

 

"Attention creates demand" is the rule you seem to be talking about, but the rule never changed. Only the way the game was played changed... very slightly.

 

Movies, TV shows, Gerber Photo-Journals, Wizard Spotlights, CharacterX reappearing in this month's new issue after a long absence or being used in a more significant role, etc. They all bring/brought new attention to specific comics, which often had relatively little attention previously.

 

The difference is the number of speculators who don't give a about the comic, only the money they think they can make from buying and selling it. The volatility comes from them over-inflating the supposed value thinking that they can find a greater fool, then dumping when the price shows any weakness. If it was only people who actually care about the comics buying them, there would be a much smaller increase and no frantic dumping on a slight decrease.

 

I don't disagree with you.

[BarryAllen]

Are anti-pressers practicing freedom of speech or violating hate-speak laws...?

[BarryAllen]

What rules did movie books change?

 

They introduced a volatility into the market that did not used to be there.

 

So what is the rule?

 

"Attention creates demand" is the rule you seem to be talking about, but the rule never changed. Only the way the game was played changed... very slightly.

 

Movies, TV shows, Gerber Photo-Journals, Wizard Spotlights, CharacterX reappearing in this month's new issue after a long absence or being used in a more significant role, etc. They all bring/brought new attention to specific comics, which often had relatively little attention previously.

 

The difference is the number of speculators who don't give a about the comic, only the money they think they can make from buying and selling it. The volatility comes from them over-inflating the supposed value thinking that they can find a greater fool, then dumping when the price shows any weakness. If it was only people who actually care about the comics buying them, there would be a much smaller increase and no frantic dumping on a slight decrease.

 

I don't disagree agree with you. (shrug)

 

FTFY

[THE_BEYONDER]

Is there any element of 'now my 9.6 isn't worth as much cause there are more 9.6s because of pressing' here?

 

This is a question I didn't really want to ask because I didn't want people to feel like I was trying to push any buttons. Since you broached it...

 

We obviously can't act like scarcity in grade doesn't matter, it obviously does matter in many instances.

If that's the actual concern all the other arguments against pressing kinda go away.

 

This has never been a concern of mine.

[THE_BEYONDER]

Always a bit amusing that some of the most strident anti pressers have no issue selling books to known flippers & pressers.

 

Just sayin'

 

Please feel free to elaborate on this amusement.....

[THE_BEYONDER]

Can't speak for anyone else, but I've never pressed a book. I sold my high grade ASM collection back in 2007 consisting of books I bought in the early days of CGC, knowing full well many of them had "potential". I'm sure I left tons of money on the table.

 

I too, have never pressed a book.