Why restore??? 1 1

[Hollywood1892]

On 11/22/2019 at 7:09 PM, XxSpideyxX said:

I don’t understand the concept behind comic book restoration.   I’m not talking about preserving very rare books for historical purposes.   I mean color touch, trims, or other means to bump a boom up a grade or two, only to gain that dreaded purple label.  
 

What is the point?  Does the grade bump with the purple label generally command more than the same book without the restoration work?  

I personally prefer to have books in all their loved imperfections.  Its kind of like plastic surgery after 60.  Everyone can tell what was done and it’s never as good as what would have presented naturally.   
 

But I’d love to hear arguments or reasons to the contrary!

This is a really good post

Thank you.

I agree about the originality of a book and keeping it that way, same as a painting. I also agree with restoration on historical books.

When it comes to slabbing, I would tend to submit books without restoration, but if people feel the need to do it, that is their choice.

If I restored a book purely based on preserving its antiquity rather than watch it fade to black, than that is the reason I would do it and I would not submit it.

Though at the same time, is submitting to CGC not a form of preserving, in itself?

[Shawngk]

My concern is preserving books for my collection.  I have some older books that I think a cleaner looking paper would be nicer for the quality of book before ccs.

[XxSpideyxX]

10 hours ago, Hollywood1892 said:

This is a really good post

Thank you.

I agree about the originality of a book and keeping it that way, same as a painting. I also agree with restoration on historical books.

When it comes to slabbing, I would tend to submit books without restoration, but if people feel the need to do it, that is their choice.

If I restored a book purely based on preserving its antiquity rather than watch it fade to black, than that is the reason I would do it and I would not submit it.

Though at the same time, is submitting to CGC not a form of preserving, in itself?

I don’t know enough about comic book degradation to be sure, but I would imagine that storage under basic comfortable living conditions would result in a book that never fully fades to black in one person’s lifetime.  

I guess If I owned one of the last remaining copies of a comic on earth, I would first digitize it.  Then I would see what preventative measures I could take to stop further deterioration.  But I’m still quite certain I wouldn’t try to ‘bring it back to life’ with a facelift for aesthetic reasons only.  
 

And yes, slabbing is certainly a form of preservation.  But that is something entirely different.

I think of it this way:  preservation with CGC is boiling an egg.  It looks the same, but you can now only see the outside.  Restoration is pulling out all the chemicals, colors, paints, and stickers to make Easter Eggs.