Does anyone know when Comic books started getting pressed? 0

[lou_fine]

On 9/19/2020 at 9:39 PM, Tony S said:

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 

Probably about the same time that Ewert started micro-trimming his books and deep pocketed collectors/speculators were singing the praises about his uber HG books and digging deep deep down into their pockets to hopefully be able to sang a copy.    

What Bill Sarill and Susan C. were primarily trying to do was to conserve books not only for visual appearnace purposes, but also to prevent them from incurring further damage and to help to extend their life.  Needless to say, what Matt and Jason were doing didn't really have much true redeeming qualities when it came to the conservation of the actual comic book, and simply so much more about getting as much money out of a book as possible by foisting and laundering artifically manipulated books upon an unsuspecting marketplace via CGC with zero disclosure at a time when pressed books were still considered to be restoration.      

Don't we all remember when this whole manipulation of books fiscao came to light on these very boards here about 15 years ago?  Just imagine if CGC had decided to come down with the opposite viewpoint that micro-trimming was nothing more than maximization of potential for a book becasue all books got trimmed anyways and you would not want CGC guessing as they could not tell with 100% confidence if a book had been micro-trimmed or not, if the work had been done properly.  To offset this, pressing would have been deemed as destruction of a comic book due to unknown potential long term damage to a comic book.  Of course, in this bizarro world, Matt would have been drummed out of the marketplace while Ewert would now be in charge of grading at CGC with all collectors running down to the loonie store as fast as their little feet could take them in order to buy the sharpest pair of scissors they can find on the shelf.    

 

[B2D327]

My older brother used to press his comics with a regular steam iron in the late 60s/early 70s; not saying he pioneered it but it was something he and his collector friends would do