"RESTORED" Wagner - how should we feel about this as collectors?

[jchcollins]

Everything I could possibly think of to say about that Wagner I think has already been said in this thread. It's bizarre, and no the Wagner is technically not unique, but it's close enough to being unique that I think it makes for an almost one of a kind situation with that type of restoration / overhaul. If it floats your boat and you've got nearly half a million bills to put down on a single baseball card, then more power to you.

What I wanted to hone in a bit more on that was sort of addressed here is the "acceptability" of other minor doctoring / restoration in other cases. Whether you are ok with that or if you frown upon it, it's happened for decades now and there are even plenty of slabbed / authenticated / number graded cards that have some of this work done. With all of the other growing number of misses that we have seen in recent times with PSA, SGC and others - you know that's true even if you don't like to think about it.

The question I would pose is the difference between honest wear / damage to a card vs. "dishonest" in the attempt to make a card look better. That's the only way I know to describe it - if we are all cool with a ding or a crease that a card got 60 years ago because some kid was rough with it, but aren't cool with a touched up corner because it was obviously done in an attempt to make something look better than it was - is that really the question? There seems to be some romantic notion that pervades vintage cards about worn material "telling a story." But does it really? In some cases, I mean how do you KNOW for 100% certainty that this mark on that card was done intentionally, but that mark on the other card was the result of honest wear when Timmy took the card out of the pack in 1958? I like the idea of the romanticism, the story as well - but at the end of the day baseball cards can't talk. They can't give us the full scoop on their entire provenance. So how do you really know? It's the "honest v. dishonest" thing I think that interests me. About a decade ago, SGC authenticated but refused to slab my '56 Topps Mantle because of the suspicion of "color added" to one corner. It actually wasn't color, it was an erasure - I know; I did it myself years before that (and before the advent of professional grading) to remove a small black stain on the border / corner of what was probably otherwise a VG-EXish card. In the end, I traded the stain for a bit of paper loss on that corner, that was the end effect of the erasure and what SGC thought looked funny in terms of color. Given the changes in the hobby and TPA today, I'm not sure on balance I would change anything. I have no plans to sell the card, it's been in my personal collection for nearly 30 years now - but if I did, I would fully disclose what had been done to it. And as far as eye appeal, I'm happy still - because the card does look better with a slight erasure and maybe an odd color at one corner (if you really look at it...) than it did with the previous stain.

I say all that to ask I guess - what is worse? Me intentionally doing a little bit of sprucing up to make a card look better, or if Timmy from the 1950's had the same card and it somehow wound up with an ugly crease across the Mick's face? At the end of the day, the card is an inanimate object. It has no memory or secrets to tell. It doesn't care whether it was "doctored" or simply played with too much. Not only that, but in many cases I'm left to wonder how some "expert" really knows 100% of the time the difference between "altered" and honestly damaged. Am I right? Sorry but I would rather have my card every time. And in the end I think it does come down in certain cases to what was the person's intention with the card? We are making judgments on condition and wear not only on physical appearance but on the person's intent when it was done. At some point carrying that out into extreme minutia or detail becomes ridiculous, at least IMHO. Beyond just my example though, I mean how many cards have had a layered corner flipped back down and then put into a slab at a higher grade? You know this happens. Where do you draw the line?

Just food for thought.