I actually have a real story for Rich's fake one.
When I was younger, how cool you were was in direct correlation to how many trading cards you had. My father refused to spend money on what he considered to be a worthless fad and a primitive form of gambling, so I didn't get many cards and was resultingly not very cool. When I did get cards, I took care of them, knowing that even if they weren't the most popular or desirable they were the only ones I would be getting. My collection grew very slowly, but I began to appreciate cards for their artwork and those that portrayed my favorite characters. My friends would amass enormous quantities of "worthless" cards and stuff them in shoebox after shoebox, while I gently tended to my collection. This experience helped me form my entire outlook on collecting, and it's followed me my entire life, and still holds very true with my poster collecting. I collect what I love, unconditionally, and taking care of them is a paramount priority.
Anyway, this ties into my perspective of dry-mounting.
Towards the end of my collecting, I got a very rare and desirable card. It was one of those that would be a crown-jewel of any kid's collection and would capture the attention of everybody I knew. After pulling it from the pack, I immediately placed it in a Mylar sleeve and carefully taped closed the opening.
Because I was unpopular as a child, I responded very naively to my new found friends. Kids lined up to see the card, hold the card, and tried to "be my best friend" in hopes of trading for it. Eventually, my actual "best friend" who had stopped talking to me because I was so lame came back on my radar. He suckered me into letting him "borrow" the card, and I told him he had to take very good care of it. He promised he'd keep it perfect shape.
Except he didn't. I don't know what his motivation was. Maybe he was just an idiot - we were like nine. But once he got home he broke the seal on the Mylar sleeve and exposed my perfect card to the elements. The foil on the image scratched very easily, on almost any rough surface, and his carpet covered it with minute but noticeable scratches. When he realized what he did, he busted out the tape dispenser and proceeded to mummify my card in clear tape.
The next day, he tried to return the card to me like nothing was wrong. To him, he'd fixed it. The integrity of the card hadn't been compromised in any way, in fact, now it was BETTER because it was safe wrapped up in tape. I cried like a baby, punched a boy for the first time, and ran home. I literally cried until I fell asleep, had nightmares about my card being ruined, and then woke up and cried.
I stopped collecting shortly thereafter.
Now that I'm older and have had the means, I've collected the original trading card sets to the fullest capacity I would have liked to have as a child. It's extremely satisfying to achieve a childhood dream, even if it is small and material, but that binder full of cards is a chronological diary of my entire childhood. I keep the binder in a briefcase under my bureau so I can grab it in case there's ever a flood or a fire. They're THAT important to me.
While most of my cards are in great condition, there was naturally that one special card I needed to re-acquire. It remains the crown-jewel of my collection now. It's professionally graded in a sonar-sealed encapsulation by the Professional Sports Authenticator and certified as "gem mint condition", the highest grade they can give after examining the entire surface with a microscope.
short version:
I don't like any restorative or protective techniques that in any way alter the original state of the item because of a traumatic incident during my first experience as a collector. Psychoanalytically, I only collect posters in unaltered condition because eleven years later I'm still trying to rectify the damage caused by a childhood friend who crushed my dreams with Scotch Tape.
