there's a post over on Vintage Movie Posters Forum about CGC slabbing of posters, like is done in the comic book hobby, and I wrote a long response to the subjects that are mentioned and it seemed reasonable to cross post my response, as I obviously have a decades long connection to comics from a high spot and know quite a bit about it's history & rise. If you want to read the thread at VMPF, I suggest heading over there.
so note as you read my post, it responds to subjects mentioned by several people
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reading this thread makes me feel a need to post some real information about the comics hobby, CGC (and other third-party graders) as well as it's relation to the movie poster hobby
first of all, in order to understand the emergence of third-party grading, you have to understand why it came about and As someone who had spent the majority of his life as one of the top dealers of comics & comic art in the history of the hobby (starting as a dealer in 1966), I know the dynamics and the history of the hobby as well as almost anyone. Where the hobby has been and where the hobby went and where it might be going.
before CGC and in the middle to late 1980s timeframe, comics had become a top-level collectibles arena, in a head-to-head match-up to coins and stamps and sport memorabilia, which were the major collecting hobbies understood by the Main Street population at large. By this time in history, comics had become big business, and as a result, drew interest from the ranks of collectors and dealers of coins, stamps and baseball collecting hobbies. At conventions, we began to see a serious influx of big-money buyers from those other hobbies as well as Wall Street investors looking for other places to put their money, where they could also have fun... and comic books were the place.
However, there were problems associated with this transitory path, with grading for one and the discovery of unmentioned restoration for another (which was a common problem with less-than-honest dealers).
Here is a true story:
at the San Diego Comic Con one year circa 1986 (I believe that was the year), a coin dealer came into the room carrying a briefcase. The briefcase was full.of.ca$h! The fellow's intention was to buy top quality examples of top issues, but
he also had a specific wantlist which had the #1's of the major golden age titles.
He went from table to table, dropping a few thousand here and there until he stopped at one dealer's table and saw a Captain America #1 (1941), which was among his specific wants. The dealer had this comic graded at Very Fine (on a poor to near mint scale). Priced at $15,000, the comic fell right within his wheelhouse and he struck a deal, paid cash and put the comic into his briefcase. Continuing down the same aisle, he spotted another copy of this book, and considering that he wasn't looking for single copies, but rather investments, he asked to see it. He was immediately shocked. because this copy was graded as VG to Fine and priced at half of the copy he bought - and it was in almost exactly the same condition as the copy he had just shelled out a huge chunk of cash. Flummoxed, as he was no expert in the comics field, he pulled out the copy he bought and showed it to the dealer who explained it appeared to be over-graded and therefore - overpriced. This would of course piss off anyone who felt they were cheated and he marched right back to the other dealer requesting a refund. It was a big stink, but he got no refund. The result was that he was pissed off, realizing he was cheated AND HE LEFT THE FACILITY, WITH HIS BRIEFCASE FULL OF MONEY. NEVER TO RETURN.
This seminal episode was one of the moments that gave rise to some of the major dealers getting together and discussing how to prevent such an issue in the future, as seeing hundrfeds of thousands of dollars walk off was at best, irritating. It took a few years, but by the early 90's CGC (Comics Guarantee Company) was born.
Personally, I don't care for the process. Some of us call slabbed comics 'Coffin Books' because we feel they are dead. Be that as it may, it was an understandable outcome in the comics hobby, where grading had always been rather subjective, regardless of the Overstreet Price Guide definition guidelines.
CGC created a singular grading system, that all comic dealers would eventually agree was necessary and amenable to the hobby. The system does work.
Since then, 2 other grading companies have sprouted, CBCS and PGX. CBCS was started by my pal Steve Borock, who had also started CGC (recently the company was sold to Beckett). (note: nobody gives a damn about PGX. They suck as graders)
Now, what importance does slabbing have to movie posters collecting is a difference from comics, the main reasons being that comics is a much larger hobby by many multiples where condition is of great importance, and that there can be many many copies of almost any comic book. This could not be more different from movie posters than Texas is from New York.
In posters, very frequently, some titles are known to exist from singular copies. Ergo, you don't always have a choice between a vg and a nm copy. The grading is less important than filling the hole in your collecting and a lobby card that has been trimmed of it's borders is fully acceptable to some, when no other cards are known. Another factor is that in comics, a Fantastic Four #1 graded 9.8 might sell for 10x as much as a copy graded 9.6, especially if it is the single copy graded at that level. (note, that as more copies of a book in 9.8 surface, get graded and are added to the census, the values drop, as does the ego of owning the only 9.8 copy). These dynamics do not and will not survive in posters.
so moving on, what relevance does slabbing have to lobby cards?
in actuality, not a whole lot. Heritage sells few slabbed cards in relation to it's total listings, while in comics, there are auctions that only offer slabbed books. Action comics #1 in any grade get slabbed (as do most valuable issues). But such a dynamic will never exist in posters, because it isn't a requirement and because restoration has become far too accepted in posters (in my opinion, much to the detriment of the hobby).
But why does HA offer any slabbed cards at all? Let's take the 1931 Maltese Falcon cards they just sold. Realistically, HA wanted those slabbed so that people would know these already incredibly rare cards (I don't believe more than a few were known to exist previous to these being discovered) were in a league of their own - super-rare and in incredible condition, and they would naturally attract a specific type of buyer who was looking for cards in what some may call "Deke Mint" (in reference to Deke Richards, who only collected top-notch condition items). Slabbing translated to a higher value, and everyone who sells wants a higher value.
Is there a 'tulipmania' in comics? Well, yes and no. While I fully expected the hobby to implode 20 years ago, it not only has been going strong, it has outshone virtually every other hobby extant other than cars and fine art. There is no hobby like it, so I have to admit that my prediction the hobby was in inevitable collapse was wrong and the hobby is going to continue to thrive, in all it's various forms, even after physical comics cease being printed for new audiences.
Action comics #1 continues to get higher values and is generally reflective of the hobby and I would say is going to be doing better than movie posters for at least another generation.
Silicone frame protectors.. are they a bad thing? NO. Why would they be? Is a vinyl cover for your vintage Mercedes Gull-Wing a bad thing? It does protect your car, doesn't it? If the slab was an investment, why should protecting the slab not equally be an investment? Similarly, why should UV protectors be considered a negative? How many of you get UV plexiglas when you frame your posters, to prevent the same fading from the same damaging light rays? Insinuations that these protective measures are not positives is one of the silliest notions there are, when it comes to protecting your financial investment. How many times have we seen posters that have been faded that result in lower values for the posters at auction, like say for instance the Invasion of the Body Snatchers spotlight style half sheet that sold for a paltry $2255.00 just 4 weeks ago, or the style-A that was also faded and sold for a pittance at $310.00? So protecting your investment with any kind of device or method that is not invasive is a net positive.
Can movie posters be pushed to the same arena as slabbed comics?
Unlikely. The main reason being the size of the hobby is infinitely smaller and the supply of the type of merchandise that might require slabbing is also infinitely smaller. The 100 or so Frankenstein lobby cards don't trade frequently enough for a player to say "I'm going to put together a set in NM 9.4 or better" and even if they did, there aren't enough cards in those grades available. Many titles, we don't even know of a complete set extant, in any condition, with some titles known by single cards! This is why some people who do have 8 cards have some missing corners, missing border sections, painted over titles...
(note: anyone who wants a complete Frankenstein set in NM should just give Feiertag the million he’s asking for his set. It’s their best chance of such a task)
Plus, only some sizes can be slabbed. Lobby cards and stills are obvious. They are small. Maybe window cards, but the grading companies have to see a financial value to the costs of designing a slab for inserts and half sheets and then having a fabrication company create the die from which the slabs are produced. It's not happening. This is expensive work.
Then you have to get to another simple fact - in comics, all dealers are willing to accept CGC or CBCS slabs as accurately graded comics regardless of differences in opinion. So every dealer is willing to accept a grading standard of C-2 for good and C-10 for Mint, but this situation does not exist in posters as long as any dealer uses a proprietary grading method that does not fall in line with all others. Either everyone adopts a singular standard, or there is no standard.
Ergo in movie posters, slabbing is unlikely to hold the same position as it does in comic books and baseball cards, for those very simple and obvious reasons.
The next subject - If you want to consider 'tulipmania type signs', I say that movie posters are far from immune to such a situation. For instance, as a much smaller hobby, one thing that isn't good for the hobby is a regular over-abundance of material dumped into the hobby on a weekly basis. The size of the hobby cannot support many mutliples of any title being sold in a fore-shortened time frame, no matter how valuable, before prices fall, especially in a hobby that eschews a price guide to begin with. That is one thing the comics hobby has that prevents a collapse. For the most part, all dealers get the same prices for comics - within a range - that does not exist in posters. In posters, some people price a Barbarella poster at $395 and others price the same poster at $1495 to a different market. But what if every dealer at one convention had a Barbarella 40x60 at their booth? How would any dealer there get more than the lowest priced copy available? The poster business has a different dynamic working.
The tulipmani portion is not restricted either. Factually, once you get past the top items of any genre, many prices are in freefall, because everyone is competing against the lowest prices achieved by one dealer in an auction format.
How many times do you dealers hear "well, they have sold this poster you're asking $100 for just $15 at auction recently. Why should I pay you more? I want to give you the same $15!"? So there is a tulipmania, but it's forced by an outlier in this way. This doesn't even speak of the tulipmania that has affected things like B-westerns, Film Noir posters in the (previously) under $500 area and posters from the Golden Age of Hollywood, where the actors and films have been forgotten.
While I hate to admit it, in many ways, the comic book got it 'right'. Until there is a meeting of the minds in posters, such cooperative methodologies are at best, a pipe dream.
