PSA/SGC Slabbed Photos....To Crack or Not?

[rand1com]

I like the slabs.

Who knows what might happen to the photos over the next 100 years but safe to say I would be long gone and not worried about them.

They display nicely in the slabs.

Just my opinion but that is what a forum like this is for IMO.

[LEHR]

Originally Posted by rand1com

Who knows what might happen to the photos over the next 100 years but safe to say I would be long gone and not worried about them.

I think about this as well. I want to do my best to preserve these images but at the same time I doubt I'll give a shit if my photos are slabbed or not, or how well they're preserved, while on my deathbed.

[Snapolit1]

Those PSA slabs are a hell of a lot more imposing that the old PSA or Beckett photo slabs. Breaking a photo out of those would seem to require some pretty decent tools.

I like the slabs if I am not framing something. I've carefully handled photos in the past and chipped off corners and made small tears despite my psychotic efforts to be careful. Those suckers can be fragile.

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Those PSA slabs are a hell of a lot more imposing that the old PSA or Beckett photo slabs. Breaking a photo out of those would seem to require some pretty decent tools.

I like the slabs if I am not framing something. I've carefully handled photos in the past and chipped off corners and made small tears despite my psychotic efforts to be careful. Those suckers can be fragile.

I agree with this. I hate the slabs but I hate damaging photos too.

[Al C.risafulli]

I started putting my cards in slabs around 2005 because I was working on a type card set of Hall of Famers, and at the time I liked to display my cards. I had shelves all around my office, and with all the different sizes and shapes of the cards I'd collected (maybe 150 different type cards at its peak), the SGC slabs provided some uniformity that made them display better.

Eventually I started realizing that they also protected the cards better than I could - not only from clumsy hands but from dust, dirt, moisture, etc. They're not archival, but they're more archival than nothing.

I feel the same way about slabbed photos. They protect these brittle pieces of art really well. I also think that, to some extent, they reduce the temptation on the part of some people to trim them or clean them - the slab makes them lie flat, which improves the appearance of edge tears, paper loss, and wrinkles that often get trimmed away.

I do, however, think that maybe we're getting a little carried away with these giant slabs or plastic laminate that are housing huge pieces. These days I collect mostly large-format 19th Century team photos, and I dread the day when companies start grading these.

-Al

-Al

[Vintagedeputy]

Count me in the pro-slab crowd.

[bowmanred]

I don't collect photos so excuse my ignorance on the subject, but would it help to use a bandsaw to make a clean cut and then separate the halves? Or are the photos in question fragile enough that any extraction process is risky?