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

[mrvster]

PSA did not include a grading report, they would prob be afraid of the liability of "missing something" in the report....so it's much easier to just say "RESTORED" ....print a 20 cent label.....seal an almost half a million dollar card in a 2 dollar piece of plastic, while some 18 year old kid for all we know sealed it up in the back room.....c'mon.....this shit is common sense!

include credentials of the grader, include the amount of time spent grading the card, include the "extent " and detailed list either corroborating what the original restoration or "re creation" report either disclosed or didn't...then collect you r multi k grading fee...


such a "high" profile card should be thoroughly evaluated, documented, scanned, and a detailed list cross checking what was "allegedly" done to the card to "restore" in this case "re create" the card......

I'm sorry again PSA .... I have to say this is weak......if card restoration will be accepted in the future, include and disclose all this info, before and after pictures , and detailed info from the grader! just to mention a few .... especially on such high profile cards......then justify the high price to slab it...


even then I still would steer clear of any of these "creations"

to each his own, but don't f up our hobby even more


JOHN VANDERBECK

[mrvster]

I have always wanted to start my own grading company.....I have many ideas
collector / customer focused

[mrvster]

if you are the one who won the Wagner congrats ! to each his own.....I do not want to take away from your card/excitement or anything......I was realizing not fair of me....please forgive, my favorite card is the Wagner, so I get passionate about it....didn't mean to beat it up too much

I also hate restored cards as you can see

[Jdoggs]

PSA 1 Wagner sold last year by scp auctions for $609k. So for restored Wagner to sell for $420k is about the going rate. Congrats to the new owner.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by Jdoggs

PSA 1 Wagner sold last year by scp auctions for $609k. So for restored Wagner to sell for $420k is about the going rate. Congrats to the new owner.

+1. It's purely a matter of personal taste, IMHO, rather than right or wrong, as long as it is disclosed. The market will determine the value.

High regards to all that agree and that disagree,

Larry

[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.

[bounce]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

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.

Just food for thought.

Good post. I've really enjoyed reading this thread, and I feel like it's spurred some good thought and discussion.

On your post specifically, ask yourself those same questions from two different contexts:
1) How/why does it matter if I'm really just "collecting"
2) How/why does it matter if I'm really just "investing"

Clearly there is no right answer to the questions above, and one is not inherently "better" than the other. What I was interested to hear, and why I started the thread, is how the hobby more broadly is/has evolved and may evolve further in the future. I'm interested in others opinions about what makes certain cards valuable, how much restoration is "too much" or maybe there isn't such a thing. What is most people's perception of value, and how much of that is driven by "original" versus "looks good". Do the TPAs have any responsibility to assist in measuring/describing restoration work, and what responsibility if any do we think sellers in general and auction houses specifically have related to it.

Good stuff, keep it coming.