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Michael,
I pretty much agree. I will only linenback a poster if it has
become so fragile that it is real danger of falling apart if not stabilized. If
it has defects that can be corrected by a talented restoration artist without
backing, I might have some of that done if what's required is not too
extensive. But tears and missing pieces of paper tend to be minimized when
you put a poster in a frame with a white backing anyway. If there's really a
huge amount of missing paper, so much that it really doesn't display well
without paper-replacement, then I would tend to pass on buying the
poster in the first place (unless it was totally rare and I just *had* to
have it. Not many posters fall into that category for me).
Realistically, the reason most dealers push linenbacking (and
restoration, whether fully-disclosed or not) as being an enhancement is simple:
Profits. If you're a dealer and can buy a highly desirable title in pretty
bad shape for super-cheap and then pay a high-end professional backers and
restorers a good chunk of money to restore it to "like mint" for you, you can
then sell it for a premium and make some very nice profits. This is considered a
perfectly moral, ethically-sound and acceptable way of doing business in the
world of most collectibles. I don't agree, but that's the way of the
world.
So don't expect to see dealers claiming linenbacking is
anything less than the greatest thing since the stone litho, because it ain't
gonna happen.
It's up to each individual collector to educate
themselves on stuff like this and make their own value judgments as to what
works for them. Hey, at least in poster-collecting you can see if something has
been backed (and maybe some of the restoration work). For some
collectibles, like toys and furniture, a really good restorer can fix something
up and even a professional appraiser would likely not be able to tell it
has been restored.
-- JR
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- Re: [MOPO] linen buckling JR
- Re: [MOPO] linen buckling Jim Episale
