I'm with erik1925 on this subject.
I don't see why trimming the linen would effect the value of the poster.
I hate big linen margins, thhey make it most of the time so much harder to frame the poster.
I have a few big sized old stone lithos which already have 2 to 3 inch of blank border with only some printer details in it.
If you add another 2 inches (of linen border) you end up with imo a blank frame all around the main picture which detracts your focus.
I can agree that it's more of a mess when rolled and dealers will probably not like short borders.
But it's clear that this isn't the case here, since it's going to be framed.
Also I'm not sure if a linen backed poster is worth a lot more then a none linen backed poster , and probably in a lot of cases the linen backed poster doesn't catch the extra money that was spent for the LB ?
Last month I uses the Bruce's archive a lot to compare some prices of some Belgian poster and what I found out that the lb poster sold for a bit more then none lb ones, but not really that much and most of the time not even the difference of the lb cost...
But Bruce should be able to give us some exact figs on that, and correct me if I'm wrong ?
You ARE correct that quite often, linenbacking a poster does NOT increase the value of the poster by even the cost of the linen. The main exceptions to this is either when the poster has a defect that is extremely eye-catching, or much staining that can be removed chemically. In those cases, linenbacking a poster often DOES increase the value of the poster by much more than the cost of backing.
Why? One reason is that buyers are often very fearful of buying a linenbacked poster because they may be getting lied to about the extent of the restoration, and most collectors of backed posters have at least one "horror story" where they were massively deceived in this way (and it really sometimes takes expert knowledge to see this, so sometimes it is years later that the deception is exposed).
Another reason is that once a poster is restored, you almost always can't undo it (you can further restore it, which is not the same thing), while an unrestored poster can of course always be restored later. Most collectible hobbies put a HUGE premium on items being completely unrestored, and if this ever spreads to this hobby, it will cause a MASSIVE revaluation of most collections of older posters.
When someone buys an unrestored poster, they may well want to immediately restore it, but they may well STILL prefer to buy it unrestored. Why? Because they can see its exact defects, and decide WHICH restorer to use, and exactly to what degree they want it restored. There is more than one often used restorer that literally dips many valuable posters in paint, "enhancing the colors" throughout. Sadly, the vast majority of newer collectors are completely deceived by this, and they think they are getting a poster in wonderful condition, when actually they are getting a heavily restored poster. But because of their lack of knowledge, they never find out about the deception until their collection is sold, which often happens after their passing.
And since unknowledgable collectors often pay too much for posters at auction, this practice will surely continue. But since "dipping posters in paint" is quite expensive, it will only be done to ones that sell for a lot, because it would never pay to "restore" an inexpensive poster in this way.
I have nothing against proper restoration, when done correctly. If one has a lesser condition poster they wish to display for many years, and it would bother them to view its flaws, they by all means they should have it restored. Even if they eventually don't recoup the restoration fees, the added viewing joy over years was well worth it. But if the poster will sit in a cabinet or tube for years, I would advise leaving it as it is, because as I said, you can always restore it later, but you can't later "unrestore" it.
