Does anyone know when Comic books started getting pressed? 0

[fishpaul]

I’m curious about a book I bought from a very well known dealer back in the mid 90’s if it has already been pressed. Any long timers here know when dealers started pressing high end books? 

[theCapraAegagrus]

It was 'a thing' before CGC, but it was rare.

[William-James88]

54 minutes ago, theCapraAegagrus said:

It was 'a thing' before CGC, but it was rare.

It was not rare, it was just not the industry standard it is now for the collectable market simply because less books were worth getting pressed. Since that number has grown, due to the CGC 9.8 market, pressing to obtain this has grown as well. But it was always around.

Trying to ameliorate a comic's appearance has been around for a long time, as can be seen with all the GA and SA books that have restored labels, which is a lot. At the same time that those comics were getting a colour touch or a tear sealed, they were being pressed as well to remove wrinkles and flatten corners. I can see this being a common practice on bigger books since the mid 70s. Here is an example of a press used for comics at that time:

Edited September 17, 2020 by William-James88

[theCapraAegagrus]

3 minutes ago, William-James88 said:

It was not rare, it was just the industry standard it is now for the collectable market simply because less books have been worth getting pressed. Since that number has grown, due to the CGC 9.8 market, pressing to obtain this has grown as well. But it was always around.

Trying to ameliorate a comic's appearance has been around for a long time, as can be seen with all the GA and SA books that have restored labels, which is a lot. At the same time that those comics were getting a colour touch or a tear sealed, they were being pressed as well to remove wrinkles and flatten corners. I can see this being a common practice on bigger books since the mid 70s. Here is an example of a press used for comics at that time:

Well, from everything I've read, it wasn't "common".

It was frowned upon for awhile. Still is, by some.

[William-James88]

14 minutes ago, theCapraAegagrus said:

Well, from everything I've read, it wasn't "common".

It was frowned upon for awhile. Still is, by some.

It wasn't common like it is now, for sure. But that's not what the OP asked. They have a high end book purchased in the 90s and they want to  know if high end books were pressed back then to know if there is a possibility that they own a pressed book. And the answer is yes to all. High end books were being pressed in the 90s and thus there is a chance that book was pressed.

[theCapraAegagrus]

Just now, William-James88 said:

It wasn't common like it is now, for sure. But that's not what the OP asked. They have a high end book purchased in the 90s and they want to  know if high end books were pressed back then to know if there is a possibility that they own a pressed book. And the answer is yes to all. High end books were being pressed in the 90s and thus there is a chance that book was pressed.

I suppose your answer is more accurate than mine, given the context.

[William-James88]

1 minute ago, theCapraAegagrus said:

I suppose your answer is more accurate than mine, given the context.

It's all good man, we're both just trying to help. Take care!

[aardvark88]

4 hours ago, fishpaul said:

 very well known dealer back in the mid 90’s if it has already been pressed. when dealers started pressing high end books? 

Circa 1978? Pre-Susan Ciconne.

[Sauce Dog]

3 hours ago, William-James88 said:

 That's my current press. Gets the job done like the beast that it is.

[William-James88]

2 hours ago, Sauce Dog said:

 That's my current press. Gets the job done like the beast that it is.

It's an awesome press! 

[zzutak]

I believe William Sarill founded The Restoration Lab in 1981.  He was definitely honing his craft before then.

[shadroch]

I dealt with a gentleman who restored comics  starting around 1986. I'd bring him a batch of books and he would look through them and tell me what he could do and what it would cost. Most books cost more to fix than they were worth. He restored an Avengers 1 but it wasn't cost effective to restore the Avengers 3 and 4. He also did a JLA 1 and Flash 105.

While he offered clean and press, he never mentioned just pressing books. That's not to say he didn't press his own books but we were fairly friendly and he never mentioned it. It was really cool stopping by his studio. Once I was there and he had an Action 1 disassembled, with pages all under glass. The thing I found strange was his studio was over a pizza place. I'd have thought you would want to be as far from a potential fire as possible.

He told me he was pretty much self-taught but had spent a week with Susan C. to fine tune his work. 

A few years later, he was arrested and charged with switching out books on clients.  He plead guilty to some reduced charges and agreed with the Nassau Consumer Protection agency or whatever its proper name was to not restore books for profit. There is a NY Times article on him from 1996, but you need an account to access it. 

I'd guess that widescale pressing didn't take off until about 2005. 

Metropolis had a comic press but Stephen came on these boards and promised they would no longer press sometime around 2004/2005.  It turned out CGC had secretly been offering pressing to a select group of clients for years before they went public with it..

Edited September 19, 2020 by shadroch

[lou_fine]

11 hours ago, zzutak said:

I believe William Sarill founded The Restoration Lab in 1981.  He was definitely honing his craft before then.

It would appear rather obvious to me that many of you are confusing pressing that was done prior to CGC when it was the necessary final step after a book had other forms of restorative work done on it.  

Needless to say, this is a completely different animal from the stand along solo pressing which we see being performed on books nowadays and which was super rare in the old days as NCB crease(s) which could only be seen by holding the book up at a certain angle to the light.  Definitely not a very profitable strategy to be taking back then since this kind of near invisible defect were not being slammed the same punishing way they are in terms of today's grading standards and I guess we would all sadly know the exact reason why.       

Edited September 19, 2020 by lou_fine

[DanCooper]

6 hours ago, shadroch said:

A few years later, he was arrested and charged with switching out books on clients.  He plead guilty to some reduced charges and agreed with the Nassau Consumer Protection agency or whatever its proper name was to not restore books for profit. There is a NY Times article on him

Was this Richie C.?

I don't know if this is the same incident/person you are referring to, but here is a NY Times article from around that time (no mention of having to give up restoration practices though)

"A Queens couple who had hoped to finance their son's education with their $92,000 collection of rare comic books said today that they had been defrauded by one of the best-known comic book dealers on Long Island.

"He was once one of my husband's best friends," said Linda Stanziola, whose son, Keith, is 2. "He attended my son's christening and ate dinner with us and was considered a friend by everyone he ripped off."

The dealer had operated Island Art and Restoration in Elmont until it went out of business a year and a half ago. He was charged today with having schemed to defraud the Stanziolas and nine others by selling their comic books, which he had on consignment, and keeping the proceeds."

[comicdonna]

On 9/17/2020 at 8:08 AM, fishpaul said:

I’m curious about a book I bought from a very well known dealer back in the mid 90’s if it has already been pressed. Any long timers here know when dealers started pressing high end books? 

Way back!  

[shadroch]

1 hour ago, DanCooper said:

Was this Richie C.?

I don't know if this is the same incident/person you are referring to, but here is a NY Times article from around that time (no mention of having to give up restoration practices though)

"A Queens couple who had hoped to finance their son's education with their $92,000 collection of rare comic books said today that they had been defrauded by one of the best-known comic book dealers on Long Island.

"He was once one of my husband's best friends," said Linda Stanziola, whose son, Keith, is 2. "He attended my son's christening and ate dinner with us and was considered a friend by everyone he ripped off."

The dealer had operated Island Art and Restoration in Elmont until it went out of business a year and a half ago. He was charged today with having schemed to defraud the Stanziolas and nine others by selling their comic books, which he had on consignment, and keeping the proceeds."

Yes, that is he. He was initially charged with defrauding people over not paying them after he sold their books but during the investigation it was shown he'd take a book, restore it it, sell it and then return a lesser copy he'd done some work to. In one example, he took a FF 1 , restored the cover but then attached it to a greatly inferior interior while attaching the nicer interior to a spare cover he had laying around. That's not as weird as it sounds as in the late 1980s, hundreds of SA Marvel covers surfaced in the NY area and many dealers married them to coverless books, or even replaced the original covers.

Several dealers passed on my restored Flash 105 because they thought it had a married cover but CGC gave it a Blue 6.0. To make things stranger, when he first looked at my book, he said he would add Japan paper to the cover, which should have garnered a Purple label so I think he ended up giving me someone else's cover or maybe even the whole book. I had given it to him around Thanksgiving and usually waited three months or so to get  books back, but this one was done before Christmas. He said I'd told him I wanted it for a Christmas present., when what I'd said was my Mother was paying to restore the book as a Christmas present for me. 

It was one of those cases where little things here and there didn't add up but only in retrospect do you start to get the whole picture. 

He ended up surrendering his business license as part of his deal.

Rich was a nice guy. I'm not sure he intentionally set out to cheat anyone, he just pushed the envelope on what was acceptable and was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

He was one of the most passionate collectors I knew, and had an amazing collection of Good Girl original art. 

[DanCooper]

35 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Rich was a nice guy. I'm not sure he intentionally set out to cheat anyone, he just pushed the envelope on what was acceptable and was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

He was one of the most passionate collectors I knew, and had an amazing collection of Good Girl original art. 

Yeah, Richie was a personable and likeable guy, but this goes to show how the hobby had similar issues back in the day. People think the hobby today has issues, with all the shenanigans going on and the BIG $$$ at stake, but the 1980s and earlier/beyond had it's issues also (not only Mr. D$D.!)

Richie was also part of a video/comic shop on Hempstead Turnpike in those days. Front part video store rentals/back part comics. They were even Overstreet advisors to the GREAT Jon Warren Overstreet quarterly Updates back in the day. The funny part was Richie was listed as a co-writer on the video store's market reports, but was not listed as an "advisor" in the table of contents main page of the Overstreet Updates (his partner Seth was listed as the advisor only)

It seems a lot of the issues that are discussed on these here boards in 2020 (i.e. restoration or not restoration practices, how can somebody be an Overstreet advisor/consultant?, etc.) are issues that have been around for awhile and will probably still be discussed ad nauseam in 2040, 2050 and beyond!

The more things change, the more things stays the same.....

 

[James J Johnson]

16 hours ago, zzutak said:

I believe William Sarill founded The Restoration Lab in 1981.  He was definitely honing his craft before then.

Wasn't almost every restoration project by the founding fathers of comic restoration, Sarill, Ciconne, the Wilsons, etc., etc have a clean and press as the finishing touch? I've seen a lot of restoration certificates enumerating procedures performed with checkmarks in boxes, and almost always the clean and press box was checked. This would make sense as pre-CGC cleaning comics typically involved either dry cleaning, but often, water and chemicals. I imagine you would have no choice but to press after any type of cleaning that involved liquids and/or cleaning chemicals.

[Tony S]

Bill Sarill founded the restoration lab and was the first person to seriously research and apply "professional" techniques to comic book restoration. He founded the Restoration Lab around 1975 - 1976 Susan Cicconi worked with him/apprenticed with him for about five years staring in 1981 before taking over the business follow Bill's retirement. 

In the 70's, 80's and into the 90's, "pressing" a comic book was usually part of a more involved restoration. In those days the books were typically disassembled and pressed one page at a time, then put back together as the final step. 

Matt Nelson - and others - received some training from Bill Sarill. Others may have done so as well, but Matt is best known for having adapted pressing into a process that involved no disassembly of the book and only involved pressing. No restoration.  One would have to ask Matt when he began doing this. I would guess late 1990's or early 2000's 

 

Edited September 20, 2020 by Tony S

[telerites]

Didn't Pop Hollinger press his books?

In a way, I get excited to see a Pop book with the tape down the spine, especially when I put it in context of the times and I believe his intent was admirable.  I have a few with parts and pieces from a variety of comics.