Yard sale rumor

[Underground44]

The acid and chemicals in the plastics used for "shrink wrapping" isn't good for the long term storage of books. I guess it's better than nothing but for high dollar books it will do more harm than good in the long run.

It will definitely cause deterioration in the paper quality

[nocutename]

You should leave your number just in case the son wants to sell.

[Stuffy-migration]

At least he didn't shellac them.

 

There was a thread somewhere about a guy that is literally doing just that to preserve them.

 

Link to that thread.

 

Actually my first thought was of that fruitloop putting together the Q Collection: http://q-comics.com/.

 

He laminates all of his comics so they can last 10,000 years, and wanted to donate the collection to the Library of Congress. They turned him down: "(The LOC rep) then referred to the laminating process as "plasticizing" the comic books. He then stated that the Library of Congress did not have the knowledge of how to preserve and maintain comic books that have been "plasticized". Therefore the donation of the Q-Collection comics was denied.".

[chrisco37]

Wasn't there was a "dealer" that was selling on ebay a couple years ago that claimed to have frozen his books?

 

reynoldj?

 

Yep. It's Reynold Jay.

 

He was one of the earlier "pioneers" in the CGC pressing game. He offered a "prep service" prior to submission that included dry cleaning and pressing of your books prior to submitting them to CGC.

[underthebigw]

The acid and chemicals in the plastics used for "shrink wrapping" isn't good for the long term storage of books. I guess it's better than nothing but for high dollar books it will do more harm than good in the long run.

It will definitely cause deterioration in the paper quality

 

Over-rated.

 

The reality is that it's all about environmental conditions. If you have a book in bad environmental conditions, it will suffer damage raw or in plastic. If you have it in stored in good conditions, it will be fine, regardless of whether it's raw or stored in low-grade plastic. It's all about minimizing oxidation, and protecting from insects and dust (dander and mold spores). Would mylar be optimal, especially in poor conditions--yes, but other protection is better than none.

 

A couple of examples of this:

 

--multi-pacs: made from the low-grade plastic, yet books still come out white and fresh

 

--ever pull books out of green comic bags? Books are great, bags disgusting.

 

--for about 3 years, a really obsessive collector from the Richmond, VA area would bring his hand-picked early SA newsstand books up to the DC area. They were wrapped in, of all things, plastic he used to take from his parents' dry-cleaning in the early 60's. Sweetest, whitest, freshest books I ever saw.

 

The crappy plastic doesn't really cause the deterioration, just doesn't prevent it. I even once had a LoC conservationist tell me that using zip-lock bags was perfectly appropriate, even for a year or slightly more.