Posted By:
Greg ThebergeRestoration.
Not baseball, but for some of our 100 year old brewery lithographs...
We've spent 4x what we've paid for a piece to have it professionally restored so that it won't rot out for the ages and disappear forever. Of course, these pieces are the only one's known to exist.....they aren't one out of 350 known to exist, with maybe five with perfect corners stuck in a piece of plastic so the minute "condition" of a piece elevates it to some higher level over a piece with (at least my) naked eye couldn't tell you the difference between a "7", "8" or "9"...
I remember getting into a conversation at the Hartford (CT) Paper show and hearing someone mention that he's very grateful that the emphera world has not been taken over by the "slabbing" mentality.
If you can restore a piece without altering it's original finish, I don't see any reason for not doing it (with complete disclosure of course if it's to be resold).
greg