Spalding, Reach and other cut outs sold on our BST

[Exhibitman]

Who is on the jury?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Who is on the jury?

me


and as you know Adam, 99% of the time I fall into your line of thinking. All that rhetoric being regurgitated, I can't imagine the board overwhelmingly not wanting, or wanting, something and us not doing what the vast majority would want. So far it looks like they will be allowed in the correct section and with full disclosure.

[ElCabron]

I am 100% against the cutting out and chopping up of vintage pieces. Having said that, I don't see why there should be any issue with them being sold on the BST, providing they are described accurately. VERY accurately. Where it gets sketchy is when pieces are chopped up and then those pieces are slabbed and sold as something being presented just like a card, even if they are not outright described as a "card." That seems very misleading to me and a novice collector could easily get burned.

-Ryan

[barrysloate]

The same way a show promoter is allowed to tell a dealer that only vintage material can be displayed and not shiny stuff, or to say no beanie babies are allowed at the show, Leon is free to prohibit these cutouts from the BST. It has nothing to do with ethics or anyone's right to cut them up, it's how he wants the board to look. It's his board, so he decides. He is simply taking input to help come up with a decision.

[Runscott]

The discussion has been great - you couldn't pick a more appropriate group of collectors to discuss such an issue, unless you were able to get Libertyforall and a couple of old book dealers to join in. I'm surprised that the majority of our group supports this practice, but I do realize that the goal of most is to get their item for their collection, and will do any rationalizing necessary.

My suspicion is that now that this practice is 'Net 54'-approved, we'll see more people purchasing these books with the idea of cutting out pictures for their collections, or for re-sell.

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by Runscott

The discussion has been great - you couldn't pick a more appropriate group of collectors to discuss such an issue, unless you were able to get Libertyforall and a couple of old book dealers to join in. I'm surprised that the majority of our group supports this practice, but I do realize that the goal of most is to get their item for their collection, and will do any rationalizing necessary.

My suspicion is that now that this practice is 'Net 54'-approved, we'll see more people purchasing these books with the idea of cutting out pictures for their collections, or for re-sell.

I hope we aren't assisting the support of this practice, but sadly, I agree, that I think we are.. Having said that, I do own a few of these. One is an older woodcut, that I greatly trust was from a "damaged" book. Mostly, I purchased a handful for framing and display, which I'm fairly confident were taken from good books.. Although, I will admit there are a few that I cherish as collectibles(although, I probably shouldn't). The 1893 Cleveland team, with Cy and others, plus a few that are probably the only career contemporary items that my collection will ever see of Sockalexis, Moonlight Graham, and a few negro leaguers.. Another small handful act as placeholders in(or supplemental to) my HOF rookie(pre-rookie) collection(only if they pre-date anything else released of a player).

But like I said, I'm fairly confident that all but 2 or 3 of the dozen or so that I own came from good books, which does make me sad, and perhaps a bit angry.. And it is fairly easy to tell if they came from badly damaged books or not..

[Runscott]

David, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Based on these discussions, I actually feel that maybe I'm overemphasizing the historical value of these books. As Adam says, they are not priceless illuminated books, and on the other end of the spectrum they aren't modern magazines. They are somewhere in-between. Perhaps the best you can do, if it's important to you, is to build your own library of original books. They haven't gone up in price over the last ten years, despite the cut-outs, so it's possible that there are so many of them available that we have an endless supply

[drcy]

It's not a simple topic. My usual rule is 'as long as it is described accurately.' However, I'm against the destruction of books and similar. However, many cutouts pictures and such are found in old albums and on old autographed index cards, and I don't think should ban the sale of those things cut out 100 years ago. If you look at a kid's Victorian album you'll see all sorts of cutouts and long ago handmade 'diecuts' mixed in with the trade cards and scraps.

So I'll say they can be sold as long as they are accurately described. But I'll voice my opinion (I said opinion not rule) that books shouldn't be destroyed in modern times.

And, realize, that if you ban book and magazine cutout pictures, you'd have to ban the sale of cutout Harper's Woodcuts to be consistent. I'm pretty sure even the purists don't mean to ban the sale of Harper's Woodcuts and have even sold them. As I said, it's not a black and white topic. Some Police Gazette 'supplements' are full page pictures from the magazine with article text on the back, though I suspect the publisher half expected, or even intended, that many would cut them out. Likely, most on the market were removed from the magazine when the magazine came out.

Though the woodcuts can be removed as part of the whole pages without scissors, as the magazine pages were loose and folded like the standard newspaper. No staples or binding involved. On the other hand, some might argue that removing loose pages from the rest of the magazine is still a sort of destruction. The famous Leslie's Illustrated James Creighton woodcut is a middle two page spread with a fold line down the middle. It's not cut out, but was removed from the publication.

For the record, I'm not against the selling of Harper's Woodcuts.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by drcy

And, realize, that if you ban book and magazine cutout pictures, you'd have to ban the sale of cutout Harper's Woodcuts to be consistent.

David, I don't understand this logic at all. Reach Guides were sold with photos as support for the text. Harper's woodcuts were sold with full-page woodcuts that were sometimes even hand-painted at the time, the publishers creating a product that was more appealing because it had pages that images that could be removed. Plus, it was a newspaper, not a book. I frequently tear articles, etc., out of my daily newspaper without thinking twice about it.

[drcy]

I agree that the Harper's publisher may have assumed many of the woodcuts would be removed and may have even printed the full page spreads for people to put on their walls. Irrelevant to publisher's intent (which I don't know), it was reader fashion to remove the woodcuts. I also agree that cutting up a hardbound book is commonly perceived differently than cutting out clippings from yesterday's newspaper. But many would say taking a scissors today to a complete Harper's Weekly is destruction and the magazine should be left in whole-- irrelevant to what the original publisher intended or subscribers thought.

It's not a black and white topic and things can be viewed from different angles and sentiments.

[4815162342]

Originally Posted by Runscott

...my daily newspaper...

They still make those?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by drcy

It's not a simple topic. My usual rule is 'as long as it is described accurately.' However, I'm against the destruction of books and similar. However, many cutouts pictures and such are found in old albums and on old autographed index cards, and I don't think should ban the sale of those things cut out 100 years ago. If you look at a kid's Victorian album you'll see all sorts of cutouts and long ago handmade 'diecuts' mixed in with the trade cards and scraps. Plus, Harper's Woodcuts were cut out of the magazines, sometimes long ago and sometimes just recently.

So I'll say they can be sold as long as they are accurately described. But I'll voice my opinion (I said opinion not rule) that books shouldn't be destroyed in modern times.

And, realize, that if you ban book and magazine cutout pictures, you'd have to ban the sale of cutout Harper's Woodcuts to be consistent. I'm pretty sure even the purists don't mean to ban the sale of Harper's Woodcuts and have even sold them. As I said, it's not a black and white topic. Some Police Gazette 'supplements' are full page pictures from the magazine with article text on the back, though I suspect the publisher half expected, or even intended, that many would cut them out. Likely, most on the market were removed from the magazine when the magazine came out.

For the record, I'm not against the selling of Harper's Woodcuts.

Though the woodcuts can be removed as part of the whole pages without scissors, as the magazine pages were loose and folded as with a modern newspaper. No staples or binding involved. On the other hand, some might argue that removing loose pages from the rest of the magazine is still a sort of destruction. The famous Leslie's Illustrated James Creighton woodcut is a middle two page spread with a fold line down the middle. It's not cut out, but was removed from the publication.

That's sort of what I'm thinking.

If they're banned outright, then there's a whole list of stuff that also could be or should be.
The "cards" published in newspapers.
1910 orange borders
70's Hostess card singles.
The 6 card panels from Dynamite magazine, either cut or just removed.
partial Topps AD panels

All of those were intended to be cut out, which makes a bit of a difference.


And on the opposite end of things......
One of the things in the huge magazine and book batch was a book that would actually be pretty valuable in good condition. A book with a little text, and I think 12 or so plates of women done by one of the famous artists like Christy or Gibson(I forget exactly who) What I got was a water damaged copy with none of the plates. But since the plates are available from other people that remove them, I could eventually reassemble the book. I haven't pursued it because the cost of plates while less than a nice copy is more than a crummy one.

Steve B

[doug.goodman]

Originally Posted by drcy

Some Police Gazette 'supplements' are full page pictures from the magazine with article text on the back...

While I agree with your thread, and the "grey area / slippery slope" nature of our "discussion" just as a point of fact, all of the PG supplements were separate issues with blank backs, but many of the pictures used were at different times also printed in the newspaper as complete pages.

As an example, in addition to the Home Run Baker supplement issued 12-9-1911, there are at least three different times the same photo was printed as a full page in other issues of Police Gazette, at least one as late as July 1918.

While I'm not a fan of destroying guides for their pages, I do own lots of Police Gazette pages, which is obviously a bit contradictory.

[drcy]

Several years ago I won a collection of PGs and they came in both versions-- the blank back supplements and the pages from the magazine. First time I had ever had any.

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by doug.goodman

While I agree with your thread, and the "grey area / slippery slope" nature of our "discussion" just as a point of fact, all of the PG supplements were separate issues with blank backs, but many of the pictures used were at different times also printed in the newspaper as complete pages.

As an example, in addition to the Home Run Baker supplement issued 12-9-1911, there are at least three different times the same photo was printed as a full page in other issues of Police Gazette, at least one as late as July 1918.

While I'm not a fan of destroying guides for their pages, I do own lots of Police Gazette pages, which is obviously a bit contradictory.

I think with the Police Gazette supplements, the only ones that are actually supplements are the ones that actually say supplement on them. All others are nothing more than pages from a magazine. Not much different than the m114 "baseball magazine" premiums, where we see people listing the inside cover photos as the premiums too, when they're not at all the same thing. I will admit that I'm not fully educated on the PG's though, as I only own 1. The 1916 Sisler rookie.