Kevin,
An interesting question, but there's just no way to know. For
starters... the $7,800 card sold by Heritage several years ago -- much
restoration did that one have? How much was disclosed to the buyer prior
to the final bidding? As we've been discussing here with other posters,
there is no such thing as a "retail price" for *any* vintage poster.
Take two posters, identical in every way, and one might sell for $159
one week and the other for $580 the next week. The best we can do is
come up with a vague range of realized prices from past auctions and say
"it could go for something in this range". But it might go for a lot
more if there are several people bidding for it who really want it, or
it might go for less if from some reason there is no one terribly
interested at the particular time it goes on the market.
This #5 lobby card from Wizard of Oz is so desirable that, if restored,
it will go for a lot. This particular restoration would be mostly
limited to repairing the areas where someone stupidly scrawled pencil
marks (and then someone else stupidly attempted to use a rubber eraser
to remove those pencil marks). That amounts to about 5% of the total
image area of the card. If done by a real pro so that you couldn't
really tell any difference between the restored and unrestored parts of
the image, then the seller could honestly say "card with slight
restoration" (5% of the total image area is not a lot after all). And so
it could easily go for $6,000 to 7,000 or more.
Whomever bought this card made a shrewd buy. It would be expensive to
restore that 5% to near-perfection... I dunno, what Dario? Maybe $1,500
bucks? But considering what the card would be worth after the
restoration was done, it's still an incredible bargain, assuming it is
an authentic card.
By the way, I consider this type of restoration to be perfectly
appropriate and a valuable service to the hobby. To restore something
this marvelous which has been defaced is worthwhile and honorable.
That's what restoration should be used for -- not to recreate whole
posters from a tiny scrap of original paper or to over paint 50% or more
of the image area just to "pump up the colors." But putting this Wizard
of Oz card back into shape? I got not problem with that.
-- JR
Kevin Conway wrote:
This card sodl tonight for $517, the same card that in NM-Mint condition sold at Heritage for $7800 couple years ago. Obviously this one is in need of serious restoration, with several long heavy eraser marks, red pencil in the image (both Garland and Bolger faces).
My question is, with all the required restoration in the image area, what would this card
expect to sell for IF such restoration was disclosed? I've only been doing this for 29
years (not as long as James' 44 years) and I may get flamed for this, but I've done
business with too many sellers/dealers who DON'T reveal such restoration. SO, I guess
the better question IS "what would an HONEST dealer get for this"?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350283138186&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT
Kevin Conway
Conway's Vintage Treasures
www.CVTreasures.com
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