Huge concern with the current mindset of collecting...!

[FlComicFan]

Really who cares what CGC says on these defects. Is anyone really going to send in a low grade book with tape anyways for slabbing? Its not going to get any premium when you sell and you are far better off to have it unslabbed so you can look at it from time to time and show it off! Why waste money slabbing anything below VF even for Gold books? Unless its a big key and you need it slabbed to push it on someone why do it? The few books I did have slabbed were are all super high grade and I only did it to sell them because of todays mentality. Its funny before CGC I couldnt get someone to buy ba NM+ silver Marvel for guide or a slight premium now people pay 10 times guide for books that were hoarded like Iron man 1's? The problem with todays collectors is everyone has to have CGC's approval for every damn thing I mean really who can tell a 9.6 from a 9.8 They sure cant thats why you can have the same book sent in over and over and get totally different grades. Tape isnt restoration anyways any more than someone jotting their name down in ink Its a defect that lowers the grade. As for archival tape its removable so you can always have it taken off if you are that obsessed about the blue label. I'm quite content to buy 99% of my books raw and the few slabbed books I have bought were either cheap or looked better to me than what Big Brother CGC gave them. Ok enough ranting someone post some cool Gold on Ebay so I can buy em and read em.

[garthgantu]

Great thread, Shield... I'm witcha on this one.

1) I think that resto has gotten a bad rap in general because of the 'instant gratification' mindset that has pervaded the hobby in the past few years. If you're a speculator, you haven't got time to wait for a reversal of popular opinion on restoration, so you just write off restored books altogether. By the same token, our hobby is still so 'young' - compared to things like coins, stamps, guns, furniture, just about any other 'antique collectible' short of Cabbage Patch dolls - that most collectors also have a pretty myopic view. They don't really consider the question of "how long will this book last in its present condition/state?"

 

2) I agree that CGC has erred in this regard. Not only have they blown the call on using different labels, they've left a trail of confusion where restoration is concerned. I doubt very seriously that most of CGC's own graders could recite the CGC "policy" (such as it is) regarding restoration. The fact that some Golden Age books get a blue label even though the books have some glue or other "added element," while other books with equal quantities of same get the PLOD, is just one glaring example.

 

3) In this particular case, I'm strongly ambivalent Extensive restoration does smack of "comic book reconstructive surgery," but on the other hand, how much of the Mona Lisa do you think is actually original at this point - maybe 30% ? Same for the Sistine Chapel... those things are of course many hundreds of years old, but I'd bet that the first "restoration/conservation" performed on many classic works of art occured within 50-100 years of their creation.