Slabbing old paper

[novakjr]

The newspaper clippings I think are silly. I originally wasn't a fan of encapsulated woodcuts and guide pages. BUT upon second thought, the woodcuts started to make sense, as they are technically pieces of art. Now, there is a second part to the woodcuts, and that's that they many times are the oldest depictions of a player(or at the very least close), and this often times makes sense for the guide pages as well, during years where there weren't cards, or the photo predates a players earliest card.

Now I'm not trying to justify encapsulating all guide pages, but some of them make sense. For instance, A 1906 Guide page of the '05 Tigers team, which would include an early photo of Cobb seems fine to me, while a random guide page with no discernable significance really doesn't make much sense to me..

Or, take this example. A 1894 Guide page of the '93 Cleveland team(composite), which includes early photo's of Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, plus Buck Ewing and John Clarkson.. Honestly, aside from the Just So's of Young and Burkett and the Ryder Cabinet of Young(all of which only a single example are known), this Cleveland Guide page significantly pre-dates most, if not all, reasonably attainable items of the the two. This item in my opinion deserves encapsulation..

I myself have a handful of guide pages in my collection. My one stipulation when it came to them is that it had to have a significantly early depiction of a notable player(usually a HOFer, and usually predating earliest card/pin/premium/whatever). Now, neither my Detroit page or my 1894 Cleveland page are currently encapsulated, but I do plan on it sometime soon..These are both very cherished items in my collection and I just feel like these individual items are worthy of encapsulation.

Now, when it comes to the individual photos that were originally part of a larger item(such as a team composite), I don't like seeing them encapsulated. I also don't condone cutting up guides, but if they're already torn out, I just wanna find the nicest way to display or protect them..