Restored cards.....your thoughts

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Posted By: <b>leon</b><p>Hey Folks,<BR>I barely see my name once or twice on thread postings so felt inclined to start another one. I was speaking with a card collecting friend the other day and we were talking about restored cards. He has bid on one of the restored cards in the Mastro auction and actually didn't read the very bottom details, which included the bit about "minor restoration". He hopes he gets outbid now. My question is this: How much does restoration affect your decision in purchasing a card? Personally, when I see something that has ANY restoration, I run the other way....quickly......ya'lls thoughts? regards all.....

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Posted By: <b>david</b><p>what ever happend to the very large lot of rebacked kalamazoo bats that were auctions off a couple of years ago. i believe most collectors will avoid restored cards unless it is a truly unique example

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Posted By: <b>Jay Miller</b><p>David---The large lot of restored K-Bats was purchased by a West Coast collector who still has them.<BR><BR>Leon---I would purchase rebacked Old Judge or K-Bats if I needed the card but would hope to get an original copy at a later date. As to other issues I would, like you, avoid restored cards. When you start down this path you open up the issue of how much restoration is OK. Taken to the illogical extreme,isn't a reprint is a 100% restored card with a new back.

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Posted By: <b>leon</b><p>I agree that re-backing would be ok but only in extreme scarcity cases.....maybe like this Holmes-to-Homes I just picked up.....with the help of a collector friend that knows I collect backs I picked this one up recently...only the 2nd one I have seen in person.......regards all.....<BR><BR><a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=31722&item=2720777658&rd=1" target=_new>http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=31722&item=2720777658&rd=1</a>

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Posted By: <b>Harry</b><p>I collect many different things and baseball cards (and maybe coins) is the only collectible that I can think of off the top of my head where restoration is so controversial. It is acceptible in antique cars, furniture, photographs, jewlery, watches, advertising signs, etc. Heck, even within the sports memorablia hobby, restoration is acceptible in jerseys, display pieces, bats, books, etc. <BR><BR>Obviously, the most important thing is that it must be disclosed. <BR><BR>I am also under the assumption that most professional restoration on paper products can be reversed if desired. <BR><BR>I would not mind having an item with light professional retoration. I would much rather have a card with a light color touch than the same card with a big scratch on the player's face. <BR><BR>Every collector will have to decide for themselves, how much is too much. For many, the answer will be zero while others will not mind massive amounts if the piece looks better.<BR>

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Posted By: <b>runscott</b><p>Restoration is controversial and has a big effect on prices for all paper items, including comics, rare books and other paper documents. While restoration is more acceptable for rare books than the other items, it has a major effect on value. <BR><BR>I think that restoration is most controversial with cards because it is used so often in a deceptive way - "trimming" has given all forms of restoration a bad rap. I don't have a real problem with the Darbys restorations, but I think it would have been better to create high-quality reproductions instead, leaving the originals "as is". JMO.

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Posted By: <b>Albie O'Hanian</b><p>I have bought restored cards (unknowingly) and sent cards away to be restored. I like the idea as long as everybody is up front about the situation. BMW ran an auction where there was full disclosure about the cards and they got a good price. I have always thought that removing items (creases, pen marks) from cards is less offensive than building up cards. Depending on the price, I would probably rather have a restored Mickey Mantle rookie than a card that did not present well at all. There should be a place in the hobby for restoration but there are too many people who do not disclose items and use deceptive "restoration" to their own advantage.

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>I only have 2, and they are from 1975, so they don't need restoring, but it seems to me, many of them do need it--unless all you want to do is ogle the cover. When you read an ancient comic book, eventually it needs restoring--and I'm glad to say, comic books, routinely restored, have the restoration details attached to them, and, no matter how rare, cost LESS restored than in the original.<BR><BR>I wouldn't want a restored card--unless it was one of those original Darby chocolates that was nailed to a barn and had smoke damage. I could probably think of other exeptions...but Mastro'<BR>s Peck and Snyder is not one of them!

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Posted By: <b>Hankron</b><p>For large display items, like movie posters and even advertising signs, the desire for restoration is understandable. If you have a well kept home, it's understandable that you would want that giant movie poster in your livingroom to not look like charred remains from a sunken pirate ship. Also, for many antique prints restoration is important to preserve the print. Left unchecked, the thin paper will often be destroyed by time.<BR><BR>Even with these types of prints and posters, a natural Mint poster will always be worth much more than a restored to Mint poster. So, in the movie poster and fine art hobbies, the collectors and dealears are conscious of and checking for alterations and restorations. Trimming to an original Salvador Dali print is considered to be bad just as a trimmed 1958 Topps Willie Mays is considered to be bad.<BR><BR>As already noted, baseball card collectors are unually adverse to restoration. And there's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. Firstly, unlike movie posters, trading cards are not display pieces, and are kept often literally in boxes in closets. The average Babe Ruth Goudey is taken out and looked at once in a while, not displayed behind the dinning room table for everyone to view while eating. As they're usually printed on heavy cardstock, preservation is not a big deal. Since they are so small and condition sensitive, any alteration, even small, is considered to be a momentous situtation, as opposed to a 4 foot by 5 foot poster. In the hobby, 99.99 percent of restorations are a part of fraud: trimming, bleaching, 'Magee' to Magie', etc in order to cheat someone out of money. So it is understandable that the whole idea of altering a card's appearance leaves a bad taste. <BR><BR>Whether or not one considers restoration desirable or undesirable, the one rule that flows through all areas of colletiong-- toy trains to Rembrant paintings, antique furnature to stamps-- is that restoration has to be be specifically reported to the potential buyer, and that not reporting it is unethical and possibly fraud.<BR><BR>

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Posted By: <b>petecld</b><p>I don't have any problem with restoration as long as it is disclosed when the piece is sold.<BR><BR>Two conservation firms I have talked with both said that trimming a piece just to make it look better is not considered restoration and I agree. Trimming deserves the bad rap it has but I have no problem buying a trimmed card as long as the trimming is disclosed when the card is sold.<BR><BR>I also don't understand why restoring a Baseball card is such a huge controversy. When you consider the historical objects that have been restored including the Sistine Chapel, the Statue of Liberty, the Mona Lisa (did you know it's also trimmed), etc. . . .what IS the big deal with restoring a Baseball card?

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Posted By: <b>runscott</b><p>All three examples you gave are displayed and viewed by millions. Also, each is unique - I don't think the importance of "uniqueness" can be over-stated. If there was only one t206 Wagner, in 'poor' condition, and it was twenty times bigger than an actual t206 card and hanging on the wall at the National Museum, viewers would be screaming for restoration. Or, if there was only one t206 Wagner, and it was 3-dimensional, hundreds of feet tall and planted in the river in front of New York City (in poor condition), we would want it "shined up" and the cracks filled (what an image for the immigrants! Also, probably more appropriate than a French statue). Now, I have to disagree on the Sistine Chapel thing - I liked it dirty and original, but I also have an aversion to these partially sandblasted 500-yr old cathedrals that are half-gray, half-tan. And I think a massive painting of the t206 Wagner image on the roof of a cathedral, though distasteful to many, would look okay in 'poor' condition as opposed to 'near mint'.

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Posted By: <b>jay behrens</b><p>I went thru the Vatican in 1986. Half the cieling of the Sistine Chapel had been restored, a portion covered that they were restoring and about 1/3 still visable and unresotred. Seeing the progression was amazing, and I cannot imagine anyone seeing this would want to keep the chapel unrestored. The restoration work is simply incredible.<BR><BR>A big part of what the restoration has done is to remove 'additions' and changes made by Popes to make the pictures look they way they thought they should, such as giving Judas horns and goatee to make him look more evil. Restoration has removed this sort of thing.<BR><BR>I spent 1 full day in the Vatican and didn't get to see everything I wanted to, but I did find an open door that wasn't supposed to be open and got to explore a part of the catacombs under St Peters that is not open to the public until chased off by a security gaurd.<BR><BR>Jay- always causing international incidents

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Posted By: <b>runscott</b><p><a href="http://www.homestead.com/runscott/Wagner.html" target=_new>http://www.homestead.com/runscott/Wagner.html</a>

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Posted By: <b>Tom Lawrie</b><p>The problems with restoration in our hobby are so significant that I think restoration has no place except in a few isolated instances. <BR><BR>1. Restoring a "unique" artwork or valuable piece of furniture is quite different than restoring a card that was printed in the tens of thousands, and of which quite a few still exist. Restoring the former returns those pieces to an original vision or functional state, while restoring the latter generally serves little purpose. [I've examined the restored (unique) Darby Cobb in person, and were it mine, I would prefer a tack-holed unrestored version.] Plus, artwork and similar items usually have solid provenance (beyond "former Halper" or "former Copeland"), with clear restoration records. Few cards ever have any real provenance.<BR><BR>2. No matter how ardent the collector might be that he is restoring a card for his own collection, there is no way to guarantee that he or his heirs won't sell his collection in the future (my apologies to the few female collectors reading this board). Thus there is always the possibility that the restored card will be returned to hobby circulation and possibly be passed off as original. And it only takes one tired PSA, GAI, or SGC grader on an "off" day to legitimize a restored card.<BR><BR>3. There are no legitimate reasons for dealers to have their own cards restored other than to deceive buyers. <BR><BR>4. And trimming is not restoration - it is simply an attempt to deceive. (There is no legitimate reason for trimming.)<BR><BR>Therefore I think that any restoration of sports cards has the real potential to be used deceptively at some point in the future, and thus should be avoided like the plague. <BR><BR>One example: the restored 1952 Mantle that was correctly identified as such in a Mastro auction, but which the buyer (or the buyer's buyer) subsequently had graded by PRO and which was put up for sale as an original condition, high-grade card. That card caused quite the controversy, and it was easily identifiable by unique printing marks on one of the hands. Most restored cards are not as readily identifiable.<BR><BR>Keep restoration out of the hobby completely.<BR><BR>Just my opinion,<BR>Tom

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>There was once a Manchurian emperor of China (1735-1795), who collected art all the way back to the stone age, all the up to his own. We owe many. many Chinese artfacts to his collecting.<BR><BR>Trouble was, he also LOVED to stick his own two cents in, with his big, square red seal, or his jade carver, write a poem with his so=so calligraphy--right on the work of art! He took this huge, neolithic slab of jade with a beautiful eagle carved on it--and wrote about 6 lines below the eagle! (when the eagle was carved, nobody knew how to write!)<BR>Anyway, one day, the greatest masterpiece of Chinese art was headed for the palace, and Wang Hui was persuaded to forge it--to save it from the emperor's seal, and poetry, ond God knows what else! It was 6' tall--but Wang Hui had never seen the original, so he made his 5' tall. There's a hige, huge rock face in the center of the painting--Wang Hui had difficulty imagining such a big, flat rock face, so he split it. BUT IT FOOLED THE EMPEROR! He wrote all over it. he seal appears 20 times on it (this painting was made by Fan Kuan, before 1023, and is called "Travellers amidst mountains and streams"). When the emporer died, the original was brought out, fresh and clean, and saved.<BR><BR>It is customary, in China, to write a word of two, in an inconspicuous place, on a painting you get as a present. And maybe add your seal. But not to ruin the thing with your stuff!

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Posted By: <b>leon</b><p>uh............forget I asked .....best regards

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Posted By: <b>runscott</b><p>I heard a similar story though: there was a small town in Pennsylvania that had no need for a police force, only really old people so there wasn't much civil strife. The Postmaster basically ran the town, and coincidentally was a huge collector of baseball cards. As he grew older and more powerful he demanded tribute from the townfolk, in the form of baseball cards. He always stamped his seal on the back of each one: "Toy Town Post Office".<BR>

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Posted By: <b>TBob</b><p>To enhance the value of the card and open the door to $$$$$ when the restoration is not disclosed down the line. Probably less than 1% of all restored cards floating around are owned by collectors who would, if the cards were sold, reveal their provenance.<BR>I agree with Tom, keep it out. If a card is trimmed, it was done so only for purposes of enhancement of value on unsuspecting future buyers. Yes, yes I know supposedly there were a couple of old time collectors who trimmed cards to make them fit in to those pocket page holders, but you know what I mean...<BR>I also think comparing an E94 Lajoie card to the Sistine Chapel is all apples and oranges.

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>...

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Posted By: <b>runscott</b><p>In fact, I believe the "toy town post office game" has been around for a long time. I found a reference to a guy recalling how as a child he had won one of the games at a movie matinee, so these games were still being produced in the '30s. I have also seen them in auctions, so you could try to win one and add those "rare" toy town post office stamps to ALL of your cards!

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Posted By: <b>Brian C Daniels</b><p>Who among us has a well kept home???

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>...

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>making Statue-of-Honus, and what have you. Fortunately, I can't. I'm lucky to be able to send a Jackie Robinson in an e-mail.<BR><BR><BR><BR>What a scream! (as my mother used to say...)

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Posted By: <b>warshawlaw</b><p>To me,it is a poor condition card. <BR><BR>PS: CA law requires disclosure of restorations--as I noted once before--under pain of fines and damages. I am waiting to catch some jerk restoring a card and selling it into this jurisdiction--is he EVER in for a nasty surprise.