Questions Regarding "Skinned" OJs / N172

[Fred]

Scott,

That's disappointing to hear they didn't encapsulate it.

Bob,

If you collect OJs, sometimes you don't have much of a choice in the matter of having a nice image. If you are trying to piece together subsets, then you are either going to have huge holes in the sets or you find fillers until a more acceptable card becomes available.

I've waited years for certain cards to become available and grabbed them as quick as possible because a decent one may never become available and I wanted to plug that hole for a subset.

Bottom line is that image quality is what you hope to find, but sometimes those cards just don't present themselves.

My recommendation is that if a skinned albumen is going to be attached to a new back, then have a conservator that knows what they're doing complete the work. I suppose you could trial and error it until you become proficient, but if that were my Mathews, I wouldn't chance it on my own.