Humidity Level for Storing Comics?

[fantastic_four]

I'm living in the LA area now toward the beach areas. I don't have central A/C anymore, and I bought a de-humidifier. The trouble is since my collection is in a closed room, the de-humid actually heats up the room. I can get the numidity to 50% easy, but the temp goes up to around 80 degrees.

 

Wow, this sounds exactly like the problem I had, only worse. I was trying to keep it at 35% humidity, but that would heat the room to 85 or more. I had to settle for 50% while keeping the temp in the low 70s.

 

I'd say you only have one option--install an air conditioner in your comic room to cool down the heat generated by the dehumidifier. That's my long term plan as well to keep the temp and humidity closer to optimal levels. I know cold rooms in major libraries sit at around 35% humidity and 50 degrees Fahrenheit...I'm not sure I'll ever go for 50 degrees, but the upper 60s during the summer would be nice. My only fear is whether the electricity I burn makes the whole endeavor not worthwhile...

[Mister_Comics]

I don't think there is any ideal place to store comics. A desert? Too much light. Up north? Cooler but moisture. Along the coasts? Does the salt in the air affect? Down south? Heat, bugs. Mid states? Tornadoes, floods.

 

I even remember reading were the Library Of Congress has problems with perserving.

 

But I'd have to say that comics today have a better chance of surviving than years ago when they were not protected in any way.

 

So where is the ideal spot on the map?

[Stronguy]

I'm living in the LA area now toward the beach areas. I don't have central A/C anymore, and I bought a de-humidifier. The trouble is since my collection is in a closed room, the de-humid actually heats up the room. I can get the numidity to 50% easy, but the temp goes up to around 80 degrees.

 

V/R,

Mike

 

One thing you might want to do is buy some large desiccant bags and put them in the back of your comic boxes. They make them for use in cars that are going into long term storage.

 

Do som online searches. I can't be the first person who has thought of this.

[FFB]

I don't think there is any ideal place to store comics. A desert? Too much light. Up north? Cooler but moisture. Along the coasts? Does the salt in the air affect? Down south? Heat, bugs. Mid states? Tornadoes, floods.

 

I even remember reading were the Library Of Congress has problems with perserving.

 

But I'd have to say that comics today have a better chance of surviving than years ago when they were not protected in any way.

 

So where is the ideal spot on the map?

 

It's tough to argue against Denver, CO as the best environment to store comic books long-term.

[Calamerica]

It's tough to argue against Denver, CO as the best environment to store comic books long-term

 

Denver is a great place to store comics, but someone told me about Canada, particularly Winnipeg, and reminded me of that white-pages comic collection from Winnipeg, Canada.

 

CAL

[FFB]

Bad news

more bad news

 

Raven,

 

Great link. When a comic book with semi-brittle pages is restored can you also get the pages put through this Mass Deacidification process?

 

Most of the top comic book restoration pros will advise against deacidification because it is not yet a proven technique. There is some evidence and resulting concern that deacidification chemicals added to ground pulp paper actually speed up the absorption of atmospheric pollutants (sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which turn into sulphuric acid and nitric acid when exposed to moisture in the air) by the treated paper, and that the end result is that the paper may become acidic again on a more accelerated timeframe.

 

I sent Tracey Heft an email yesterday about the deacidification issue because it was from his excellent article on deacidification that I had learned about the potential dangers of this practice when used on comics. His answer is below. For those who don't know who Tracey Heft is, he is one of the top comic book restoration professionals in the world, and is a museum-trained archival conservator and a member of the International Institute for Conservation.

 

=======================================

 

Hi Tracey:

 

Do you offer deacidification as a service for comic books? I did not see a mention of it as one of the services you offer, though I did see a mention of deacidification experience on your resume and have also read your 1994 article on deacidification.

 

Thanks,

 

Scott

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scott

 

Good to hear from you. I trust that the information in the article package was helpful.

 

As for deacidification, I do not offer it as a separate service due to the still unknown after-effects of application. In the course of some treatments though, deacidification is a necessary procedure so I am well-versed in its application. However, based on my research, I cannot recommend the deacidification of your documents but instead suggest that you control the environmental factors in your storage areas that will contribute to the degredation of your collections.

 

Thanks

Tracey Heft

www.eclipsepaper.com

[OldGuy]

It's tough to argue against Denver, CO as the best environment to store comic books long-term.

 

I live in Santa Fe at 7,000 ft with average humidity slightly less then Denver. Everyone, please send me all of your comics and I'll see to their well being.

[Fan4Fan]

Didn't you say before that you had problems with maintaining lower temperatures when you ran your dehumidifier in the room where you keep your comics?

 

Yep, that's why I asked where he lives. Dehumidifiers don't work below 70 degrees, and they kick out a lot of heat, making it very difficult to achieve ideal conditions if you're living in a high-humidity region. It was quite frustrating my first year of using the dehumidifier...the unit was supposed to suck out the humidity, but in the process of doing that, I'd often find the temp in my comic room hovering in the mid-to-upper-80s when the rest of the house was 72 degrees!!!

 

Low 70s temp and 45% to 50% humidity is about the best you can hope for on the East Coast unless you have a window unit installed SPECIFICALLY in the room where your dehumidifier is...but that's better than the normal 60% to sometimes 80% uncontrolled humidity we sometimes have here in Virginia.

 

I keep 2 dehumidifiers PLUS the airconditioner going in my comic room for about 8 months of the year, and the dehumidifiers at all times. HK's summer climate is like Virginia/DC, a few degrees cooler but a few percentage points more humid. If you buy one of the newer ultra-quiet dehumidifiers, it should work even below 70 degrees, mine still work into the high 50s. Of course, the winters here are still very damp. Perhaps yours don't work so well below 70 because the humidity has dropped off quite a bit by then?

 

Actually, I just got a Maytag dehumidifier and that is supposed to be good to 45-degrees. I believe I saw others during my research that went to 40 degrees.

 

Thanks,

Fan4Fan

[tth2]

Where'd you get your "newer ultra-quiet" dehumidifier? How would I identify such a thing? I bought the highest-capacity one I could find from Home Depot sometime in 2001 or 2002. I tried to look for features on them prior to purchasing one, but I couldn't figure out how any brand differed from another other than the amount of water the container holds until it fills up.

 

Almost everyone in HK has at least one dehumidifier, so they make these ultra-quiet ones that actually look sort of like side tables, and operate really quietly, so they'll blend into people's living rooms. I went home and looked at ours, one is Hitachi and one is Panasonic, although I'm sure most of the major Japanese and German electronics brands are all represented. I have no idea whether these brands and models are available in the US, because even when I lived in a humid hot area like DC, I never saw people using dehumidifiers, except in basements or such. Since they were just used in out of the way places like basements, they tended to be pretty industrial looking and loud, like the older models in HK, which don't work below 70 degrees or so.

[tth2]

One thing you might want to do is buy some large desiccant bags and put them in the back of your comic boxes.

 

Yup, I put them in my comic boxes too. They sell them over here in stores for people to put in their closets, so their clothes don't get moldy.

[tth2]

It's tough to argue against Denver, CO as the best environment to store comic books long-term

 

Denver is a great place to store comics, but someone told me about Canada, particularly Winnipeg, and reminded me of that white-pages comic collection from Winnipeg, Canada.

 

CAL

 

Yup. San Diego, where the Pacific Coast collection came from, seemed to work pretty well, as well as wherever it was in the Bay Area that Bill Reilly's parents lived, since the SF books are noted for their white pages too. Given that all of these pedigrees with fabulous page quality survived from pre-A/C days, you kind of have to wonder whether we're all getting a little bit overworked about the whole storage issue.

[blowout]

Given that all of these pedigrees with fabulous page quality survived from pre-A/C days, you kind of have to wonder whether we're all getting a little bit overworked about the whole storage issue.

 

Maybe thats because there is a lot more money involved these days.

[PovertyRow]

Given that all of these pedigrees with fabulous page quality survived from pre-A/C days, you kind of have to wonder whether we're all getting a little bit overworked about the whole storage issue.

 

But in the pre-a/c days, those books were like Modern and Bronze age books. Now many more years have continued to pass. I am noticing a lot of Church books that have ow-w rather than white pages. I have to wonder how many of them were white when the collection was found.

[tth2]

Given that all of these pedigrees with fabulous page quality survived from pre-A/C days, you kind of have to wonder whether we're all getting a little bit overworked about the whole storage issue.

 

But in the pre-a/c days, those books were like Modern and Bronze age books. Now many more years have continued to pass. I am noticing a lot of Church books that have ow-w rather than white pages. I have to wonder how many of them were white when the collection was found.

 

My point is that Church's books survived in "primitive" storage conditions in his basement for 30+ years and came out looking pretty good. And then they survived for much of the 1970s and 80s in what we'd consider today to be relatively primitive conditions today (no mylar, no acid free boards), and they're still awesome with great page quality.

 

As for books being OW-W rather than W, I think there's only so much good storage can do, sometimes it comes down to sheer quirks in the materials that went into any particular batch of paper. Look at BurntBoy's books, all stored for the same period of time in the same conditions, and yet there are variations in page quality between different issues that came out in the same month, and between issues. Also, I think you're ascribing too much precision to CGC on their ability to rate PQ--one person's OW-W might be another person's W, or OW, and that same person might even have different perspectives depending on which day he looks at it. CGC grading, and measurement of PQ, is still as much art as it is science.

[PovertyRow]

My point is that Church's books survived in "primitive" storage conditions in his basement for 30+ years and came out looking pretty good. And then they survived for much of the 1970s and 80s in what we'd consider today to be relatively primitive conditions today (no mylar, no acid free boards), and they're still awesome with great page quality.

 

Actually, at least from my understanding, the Church had almost ideal storage conditions. Especialy the compression of the large stacks that prevented air from getting at many of the books, and from what I understand, naturally good humidity levels.

 

As far as CGC's precision to grading PQ, well, it is the only referencable(?) standard we have that covers a broad range of pedigrees. It would be great the pedigree experts could share what they have seen in differences in PQ over the years.

 

And then they survived for much of the 1970s and 80s in what we'd consider today to be relatively primitive conditions today (no mylar, no acid free boards), and they're still awesome with great page quality.

 

I was certainly using mylar and buffered boards in the mid 80's. But my main point is this: many years have passed since a lot of the pedigree books were found. Many went into the hands of serious collectors who DID take care of them as best they could.

 

I don't think we're getting overworked about the storage issues simply because time is going to continue to pass and the old books will keep getting older.

[PedigreeMan]

Someone who has seen more Edgar Church books than I (paging nochips ... paging Timely) should correct me if I'm wrong here, but there were a lot of issues from that collection that initially didn't have snow white pages. This is especially true for the books from the later years that weren't in the closet, but rather were stacked up in the basement proper. In fact, the general consensus is that the San Francisco books have better page quality ... and they were found even earlier than the Church books! (And no one really wants to hear me talk about my sweet, sweet, white-page-beauty Salidas any more, do they?)

 

Also, POV is correct in that the absence of oxygen seems to be the main reason for the preservation of the Church books. Thus far, storage in an anaerobic environment seems to be the only sure-fire method of truly preserving paper. For example, I recall reading an article in National Geographic about ten years ago describing how archeologists took core samples from a landfill and ended up extracting years-old newsprint that looked as fresh as the day it was printed. Unfortunately, short of storing our books in six foot high stacks or under three hundred pound weights, this isn't a very feasible option.

 

Alan

[PedigreeMan]

As far as CGC's precision to grading PQ, well, it is the only referencable(?) standard we have that covers a broad range of pedigrees. It would be great the pedigree experts could share what they have seen in differences in PQ over the years.

 

I am by no means a pedigree expert, but I can state with certainty that the only GA books with "white pages" (CGCed or otherwise) I have seen have come from either the Salida or Lowville "in the wall" collections. But maybe I'm just overly picky.

 

Alan

[fantastic_four]

As for books being OW-W rather than W, I think there's only so much good storage can do, sometimes it comes down to sheer quirks in the materials that went into any particular batch of paper. Look at BurntBoy's books, all stored for the same period of time in the same conditions, and yet there are variations in page quality between different issues that came out in the same month, and between issues.

 

My hypothesis is that this is due to differences in the locations of the books within their environment, i.e. some books are on the tops of stacks and others are on the bottom.

 

If you look at the various pedigrees and the state/country they were stored in, a pattern emerges--the ones that came from low humidity, low temperature areas have whiter pages than the ones from higher humidity regions. Prime examples of this are Church, White Mountain, Curator, and almost any pedigree from Canada. Most East Coast pedigrees don't have nearly as high a percentage of books with white pages, with Western Penn or the Gaines file copies being good examples. Many Western Penns are white, as are many Gaines, but they also contain a fair amount of offwhite and cream-to-offwhite books. As I said before, I have to wonder whether the white pagers are coming from the bottoms of stacks. Certainly the humidity in Pennsylvania and New York is MOST unfavorable during the summers.

 

I'd love to continue analyzing pedigrees to see if my hypothesis holds. Does anyone know what the humidity is like in San Francisco? I figured it's hot like in Los Angeles and wondered whether it was an exception to my idea about geographical influences, but I have no idea because I haven't researched the SF climate.

[underthebigw]

The problem with dessicant is that most people don't realize that it can, and should, be conditioned to maintain an appropriate RH. If you just chuck silica gel in to a box with comics, you run the risk of drying out the paper (this is how all of these crafty--as in crafts--people dry/mummify flowers). It's really unbelievable, but even most of the bozos who manufacture the stuff don't know how to do this and can not tell you what RH their silica gel will maintain. I remember speaking to Tracey Heft about this almost 6 years ago. It's really a colosal pain in the butt. There is a product called art-sorb, but it is very pricey.

 

As for the dehumidifiers in HK and Asia, they are absolutely not sold here in the US. I spent close to a year living in Guangzhou (Canton) and HK and was amazed by these dehumidifiers--they're whisper quiet and don't generate that much heat. The first thing I did when I returned to the US was look for them, but no luck.

[PovertyRow]

Does anyone know what the humidity is like in San Francisco? I figured it's hot like in Los Angeles

 

San Francisco is almost always cool and with relatively high humidity. I have been here since '99 and there have only been a handful of days that actually hit 90 degrees. Almost all the time the temperature is in the 50's - 70's with a very ocassional 80's day. A lot has to do with the microclimate enjoyed by the Bay. All that fog rolling in keeps things fresh and cool. And there are microclimates within the bay otself, with some places being even foggier and cooler than other places, even inside the city proper.