So are you into high-graded concert posters, or what?
I know, a lot of the old-schoolers don’t care about grading, and are even derisive about it. They see it as an investor’s game, and money to them is still antithetical to the peace-and-love hippie-era ethos of the 1960’s.
But a lot of people forget that in addition to the number grade, getting posters graded by CGC offers two huge additional benefits:
A) it guarantees you the poster is genuine, not a perfect repro, and confirms what the exact printing is (first, second, etc.);
B) it completely stops forever any wear-and-tear your poster would’ve otherwise received going forward. I suppose only fading can still occur once a poster’s been “slabbed”… if you happen to put it up for display for years on end. (Remember, a CGC-graded poster can still be framed with the grading strip not visible.)
But then there’s that number grade. And boy, does our April auction ever deliver on that note. Everybody knows that anything above nine-and-a-half (as I like to put it) is the golden ring; it’s the best of the best. But also, 9.0 is designated as “Very Fine/Near Mint,” so there’s the first appearance of that coveted “mint” word, so it can just as easily be said that anything 9-and-up should really be the goal. (For the uninitiated, CGC’s grading scale goes like this: 9.0, 9.2, 9.4, 9.6, 9.8, 9.9 and 10. When you get down into the 8’s, their grades are much more spaced apart.)
So in our April auction, between the KC Murphy Bindweed Press Collection and our other consignors, we have a dizzying amount of 9-and-up posters… 55 posters in that cherished territory. Fifty-five! And we’re not talking about those high-number BGs and FDs for which high grades proliferate… you know, whatever, over #50 with the ’Dog and over #100 with Bill Graham. Those posters we’d likely put in our internet-only Showcase auctions. No, these are key pieces we have in the nine’s in our live-auction Signature sale on April 16. (The Band at Winterland is a happy exception, an important poster that’s up there at #169. And we’re boasting a perfect 10 on that one.)
So if you don’t care about any of this at all, if you want your posters free of sleeves and to feel the paper in your fingertips, keep one thing in mind: At least grading is keeping the poster-collecting hobby healthy, active and growing. Did you know that the stamp-collecting hobby, which most of us remember from our youth as being just as prevalent as coin collecting, has now all but died? That’s why Heritage doesn’t even have a stamp division anymore. Why? Many observers point to the fact that the hobby refused to embrace grading; stamp collectors wanted nothing to do with it. That fact completely confounds me. How could that hobby be so short-sighted and completely lacking in business acumen?
So thankfully, for those of us who love vintage music, pop culture and great art, concert-poster grading is more than alive and healthy, it’s flourishing. As are prices. And you know what? If you really disdain it that much, just buy graded posters and then if you must, carefully cut them out of their plastic holders and discard the pieces. I’m not recommending anyone do that, but it’s a work-around for those who just hate the plastic. BUT… be forewarned… we’re all just temporary custodians of collectibles. And if you keep them in their graded holders, then your kids or heirs will have a much easier time selling them – for a profit – after you’re gone. Free of their holders, just one bumped corner and you’re out hundreds of dollars. If not thousands. Per poster. So as they sang in West Side Story, “Smoke on your pipe and put that in.”
So let the spring 2022 Olympic Games of poster collecting begin! See you on April 16…