If I have a comic cleaned and pressed by cgc does that alter the value making it less valuable?
Generally no - but any presser, including CGC - can make a comic worse. You hope CGC won’t but frankly I haven’t heard 100% positive results coming out of CGC’s in house pressing services (several people saw no change in their books when there were obviously pressable defects). I personally have found people I trust and use them and have them submit the books to CGC for me as opposed to using CGC for the service.
Well…
As a business model, it would be a vested interest for your company to make that service (clean and press ) an improvement over non cleaned pressed graded comics … or … you would quickly lose clients. I’m sure there are examples where the comic has degraded, I feel I would be skeptical about how much damage is the fault of CGC. Plenty of cleaning/pressing options out there. There’s even service that provide a “rebuild “ of missing pieces for super high end comics
It then receives a grade “Conserved “ grade but the costs are up there , apparently because really smart guys do really smart stuff to make paper re-appear. I’m not smart enough to understand such processes . Cool concept tho
I have stacks of comics I would love to have cleaned and pressed but worry mostly about the shipping… and how it is received at CGC
Yup, there’s always a risk when you ship comic books.
Just realized, you asked a different question in your title than you did in the body of your post @jjleg76 . Restoration can definitely have a negative impact on value. There are plenty of books that, if they had not been restored, would be worth a lot more (thus the aftermarket for restoration removal services). You see this with major differences in value between a Purple label comic vs a same grade Blue label comic.
Some forms of cleaning CAN be considered restoration, but often times if the cleaning is done well there is no good way to tell it was done and as such the risk of receiving a dreaded Purple label is reduced.
Unless you’re REALLY good at determining condition, I wouldn’t submit most books for grading without them first receiving a press. Cleaning on the other hand - you’d better REALLY trust the person doing it because it can go south quickly if they are cutting their teeth on your books.
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Ahhh yes good catch on the “restored” part … I didn’t understand your post until I went to look back….
Just as an aside :
As much as the purple label is dreaded
I’m starting to believe there are comics I simply won’t ever own if I don’t think about that purple label
Example being pre code horror …
Man, I wanna own some good PCH
So little hits the market at a price that I can afford that’s not in serious danger of crumbling away… or in the purple label
Can’t put another mortgage on the house, don’t wanna get divorced… have to look at the dreaded purple label I guess lol
Purple label is fine - especially if that’s the only way one might own a book. Its when you don’t expect to get a purple label and you do - that’s the issue.
Oh wow yeah that would be horrible