Restoration of vintage cards

[BackInTheDay]

One thing I've always been very interested in is art conservation, restoration and museum studies. I've had the privilege of communicating with and witnessing true masters in the field of art conservation at work.

One area that concerns our hobby is paper conservation.

An interesting ebay blog post here talks lightly about the implications of paper restoration on the sports card hobby- it's already common in the field of vintage comic books- and it really got me thinking...

Just for fun, I emailed a couple pictures to a professional paper conservator friend of mine in the Northeast. It was of a 1960 Topps card of a certain "huge name" player that was in otherwise great condition, save for a hairline crease in the left hand corner. I asked her if the crease was something she could fix.

"Easy as pie- I could make it totally disappear in about 20 minutes".

I emailed her another picture of a 1909 T206 John McGraw that is in typical "T206" condition... Rounded corners, a crease, a couple stains, etc. I asked her what about that one.

"I could make it look like it just came from the cigarette pack yesterday..."

Now, here's the scary part. These people are so good at this stuff that their work is completely undetectable. This includes under stereo microscopy. They're able to basically reconstruct anything "made of paper" to as new condition, or if the need calls for it, "properly aged but better than it was" condition. The catch is, they don't come cheap. You're talking thousands of dollars for their services so you probably don't have to worry on lesser expensive cards, but if the price difference between a PSA 5 and a PSA 8 is $10,000, you can see where the temptation may lie.

What are your opinions on the ethics of "card restoration" for higher end, vintage cards?

Bear in mind, we are talking about a level of quality that if the restorer doesn't say anything, no one will ever know. It's pretty much accepted as fact that a lot of "high grade" vintage cards have already undergone such processes.

Do you believe that restoring cards is unethical?

Do you believe that as long as the restoration is completely true to the original construction of the card and is undetectable in every way and no one will ever know, that it doesn't really make a difference?

If you believe it's unethical, then is it unethical to clean an original oil painting- which is standard practice in the art field?

It should be interesting to hear opinions. I'm sure most people will incline towards believing that there are ethical issues with it, but when the restorations are "perfect" and undetectable, they do beg some pretty profound philosophical questions.

[gosox55]

Is the restoration unethical, no. Is it unethical to present something as mint when it has been restored, yes.

I guess if the restoration is undetectable the question becomes moot. If enough cards are treated to undetectable restorations the market for high grade cards will tend to go down, especially if it becomes widely known.

I think the ethical question is not in the restoration but in how it is represented.

I would think the art world masterpieces are one of a kind, not produced in relative massive quantities, so the analogy is close but it is not quite there.

My two cents

Richard
gosox55