Rebacking Old Judges

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Hi,

It is time for me to reback a couple of skinned OJs. Because one of the two is also 99% ripped in half, and if I do not protect it now from further damage, it will certainly be in two pieces soon. The other OJ is simply for practise.

Neither card is of significance (to anyone else, I suppose) because both are also trimmed. But I bought 'em this way, and I am happy with them so far.

Looking in our cabinet which contains glues, I find: carpenters glue, Elmers glue, A new bottle of Gorilla glue (?), and a probably dried up tube of one of those one-drop-holds-a ton glues. Are any of these recommended to attach a skinned OJ to some backing?

Can you offer any additional advise before I jump into this uncharted territory?

Thank you,
Gilbert

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

rubber cement before because the excess basically 'balls' up and comes right off. If you have any of the OJ actress cards, they work best because they're the same material. I've also used actress Newsboy cabinets and then trimmed down and they had a nice look to them. You can pick up one of those for $10 or so and get 6-10 cards out of it.

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Posted By: runscott

He did a great job with a pile of skinned OJ's, and they brought close to non-skinned prices on ebay.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

I have 2 of the cards Scott speaks of and i can vouch for how good they look.Hard to tell they were rebacked without closely examining them.He can be reached at billjo7@aol.com

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Thank you, gentlemen.

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Posted By: Dan

CARD DOCTORING ladies and gentlemen. This is the same stuff that over 100 posts flipped out about for Greg. So, what is it, ok for some and not for others? How exactly does this hobby work? I know, if it suits your needs then it is ok, if it suits someone elses then everyone threatens with law suits and California code this and code that...

I am sure that sooner or later some of these items will end up on ebay with no disclaimer as to rebacking, but that will be three or four owners removed from the doctor so that makes it all ok.

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Posted By: pete

i agree with you dan, i personally dont mind a trimmed card or one with a tad bit of paperloss for my personal collection...but to sell it and not mention the altering is a little unfair to the buyer. buyers need to ask questions when a card is not graded or authenticated. i personally started to offer refunds on most of my items that a buyer is not satisfied with, as in autographed baseballs that i personally obtained and dont have a COA for, or cards that werent as good as the photos. if it gets returned, i still got the card.
as for re-backing, i'd personally not mess with it...if i bought it that way, i obviously thought it would be ok for my collection, but to each his own.
pete-

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

but you are making too much sense. There have been countless threads where members openly discuss the removal and restoration processes they use (or referred to card doctoring and altering when it concerns me). Some of those threads existed right before two of the 100+ threads about me. In those threads, dialogue flows openly and nobody is attacked and insulted. In fact processes are shared.

There is also a member of the forum who bought a very high profile card that had resided in a lower graded holder prior to his owning it only to find it get "bumped" 3 grades after being in his possession, dramatically increasing it's value.

You are right and a point I tried to make in one of the Greg threads, that anyone who restores, repairs, removes, alters, doctors, etc. a card has no control over what happens to it after is out of their possession. To one of the more arrogant and absurd members of this board who openly restores his cards, I asked him to speak on what happens after he dies, (which for all of us is the inevitable event in which title will transfer) since he resides in Calif and has performed all of the restoration in Calif, and his reply was this: As far as what happens to my cards when I die, hopefully that won't even be an issue for another 40-50 years. I'll leave it to my heirs to deal with that situation. I think this pretty much sums it up for those who practice the hypocrisy.
Thanks,
Greg

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Posted By: Gary B.

All this person was asking is how to reback these cards. I think if someone owns an Old Judge card, or any kind of card for that matter, and they want to reback it or restore it or whatever, they should feel more than free to do so - it's their property. It's when someone tries to sell these things without full disclosure that it becomes criminal. If someone sells it with full disclosure, as far as I'm concerned, they're morally fine - if the buyer then decides to resell it without full disclosure, it's their crime and not the original seller's crime. To make the argument that eventually the person who rebacks an OJ or doctors a card will die and the doctored card could then fall into someone's hands where they will sell it without full disclosure because they don't know and the person who altered it isn't around to tell the tale is just silly - I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere.

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Posted By: Dan

It is safe to assume that each OJ or vintage card that anyone owns has been in the hands of at least 3 generations of people due directly to the age of the item. Now, lets say that each generation did it's own "alteration", one did a reback, one did a slight trim and the other soak and flattened it (all of these "techniques" have been taught on N54 by several different posts), etc... you get the idea of where I am going with this. Now, in the mid 90's someone invents a thing called Ebay and the 3rd generation kid listed above finds the site and wants to get rid of all of that cardboard stuff because after all, it was soaked and flattened (he learned how to do that by reading a post he found on www.netword54.com/forum.... So, some unassuming consumer purchases the 3 generation reworked masterpiece and assumes it to be like new (but old) condition with no doctoring.

Needless to say, most of you have altered, wanted to alter, or would love to have the knowledge of how to alter if you could. For every time that before you push a cards corner down before running it in to a top-loader, you are in a small sense... altering. Why not just jam it in there the way that you found it, corner tab just slightly raised, just jam it in there. If it ends up bent over, then that is the way that it was intended to be. When people post items for sale, rarely have I ever seen them describe it while in the holder and out of the holder, now that would be a refreshing way to look at sales.

For those of you that offer Money Back Guarantee's, my hat is off to you all. That is the way to be. The way not to be, is to bash all of those around you for the sake of doing it. How brave, fighting from a keyboard miles and miles apart from the person with whom you are picking the fight with. Meet up at the National or some other Card event and discuss it over a beer and work it out. Maybe some of the big guns of Vintage could make a universal order to Vintage collecting to declair what is authorized and what is not. I loved the discussion about simply creating a company that declairs authenticity vice a grade. Now that would be refreshing because the grading is too subjective and it all boils down to how much money you spend at company "A" or "B" to get the +1 or +2 or in some cases +3 grade over the common schmuck like me. It also boils down to what college kid is working your stack of cards and how much beer he had the night before (blurry vision), once again, a subjective grade.

I really think that there are too many old wounds that people are not willing to let heal and want to just keep throwing the salt in on top of it.

For those of you that I may have offended, woops. For those of you that I didn't, thanks. Best regards, Dan.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

I can see that my great, great, great grandson may not realize that my current two trimmed and skinned (and one nearly torn in half) OJs could have been rebacked wayy back in 2004. And he could consign them as a part of the Maines hoard without mentioning that possibility.

So, eventhough Im not sure how anyone could perceive a card which is just about ripped in half with backing which is untouched, represents a card which is not rebacked, I will do the right thing.

I bet that they will look real fine glued back into a scrapbook, and they certainly will be stabilized, protected and shielded from light.

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Posted By: hankron

If an Old Judge has been skinned, there's nothing wrong with putting a backing onto it. It might not be a good thing to have it lying around without any support.

If the card is going to be put on the market, I agree with those who say it's not wise to have the new backing mimic the original. But who said the backing has to resemble the original? Have a blue or a red backing or dark green backing.

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Posted By: hankron

In fact, what I would do if I had some skinned Old Judges, I would mount them larger backings, beautifully matte and frame them and hang them from the wall. And if someone asked me if the mountings were original, I would say, "No, they're better than original."

****

A slightly off topic but true anecdote ... There a man who was the world's foremost framemaker. If the Louvre or Museum of Modern Art needed a frame for their showing of a million dollar Leonardo Da Vinci painting, they would go to this guy. All he did was make frames, even if people didn't need them. One day he looked around his shop and saw he had all these frames sitting around that no one had ordered and with nothing in them. He figured he would take up painting as a hobby just so he could stick something in the empty frames. He had more talent than he had anticipated and his paintings are now themselves in museums.

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Posted By: runscott

If I re-backed, it would be to make the card look more like the original. I would write "re-backed" in tiny ink letters on the back, for Gilbert's heirs.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

The backings would be original: a Gilbert Maines original. And at this stage I am quickly approaching more heirs than hairs.

Actually, the cards do not merit 19th century backings, in my estimation, since they are trimmed. And if you are rebacking with modern material, why not sign it?

Now to get going on the hoard ...

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Posted By: hankron

How about you mount them, take them to the ball park and get the backs signed ball players. A remounted N172 may not be worth much, but a rebacked N172 with the back signed by Ivan Rodriguez .... Even Jay Miller doesn't have one of those.

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Posted By: Jay Miller

David--You have an interesting idea here. Imagine having a Cap Anson card signed on the back by Jackie Robinson. Are there similar theme cards that could be created today that would be like this? Hey, I have one--how about a Matt Kilroy autographed on the back by Nolan Ryan. Kilroy has the record for most strikeouts in a season/ Ryan in a career.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

I believe that you hit upon something here. My contribution is Fernando Tatis broke Delahanty's record of 7 RBIs in an inning.

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Posted By: hankron

Two of my more often used responses to tyical inquiries are:

1) "Priority shipping costs me 'only' $3.85 the day the USPO invents a box that packages itself, walks to the Post Office and stands in line for 15 minutes while I take a nap on the couch at home."

2) "Take it to the ball park and get it autograhed by Ichro. Then it might be worth something."

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Or a Bonds on a Williamson, a Gibson on a Keefe, or even a Refrigerator Perry on an Icebox Chamberlin. This could be fun.