[Maxximus]

Hi all,

I'm Max, a former (and perhaps soon-to-be recurrent) sports card collector. Given the recent boom in trading cards across the board, I've reacquainted myself with some of my old childhood treasures, of which the vast majority are from about 1989-2001. Of course, this is the pre-WWII forum, so enough about that.

The more relevant part of this introduction has to do with the childhood treasures of my great-uncle, whose handiwork took place from 1934-1941. As the title suggests, these cards were glued into old-school marble notebooks with lined paper. The cards primarily consist of 1934-36 Batter-Up and 1936 Goudey/Goudey Premiums, with a few other things sprinkled in. Given that this notebook is 80+ years old and isn't getting any younger, I was hoping to remove many, if not all, of these cards so they can be better preserved in the future. I won't proclaim that I'll never sell them, but that's not the goal of this endeavor. I've taken a look at some of the older forum posts/threads that discuss soaking and I have a few specific questions here that may or may not have been addressed (apologies for excess rehashing, if so).

First, are there any considerations I should take into account for dealing with lined notebook paper versus something like album paper when attempting to do this? I don't have a good feel for whether or not this matters, so why fly blind if I don't have to? Obviously, I will be starting off on common cards to make sure I'm doing it right.

Second, given that most of the cards are intact Batter-Up cards, is there reason to believe that fully soaking the card may mess with the perforations within the cards? If so, I'll try the "marvymelvin" method from years back here.

Last, and perhaps most importantly, many of the cards are autographed. While I don't think distilled water should mess with the ink, I do want to ensure I don't mess those up, as a lot of signatures are still pretty striking. Anyone happen to have experience with this? I'll do a partial cross-post on the autograph forum later in the event I can get any other info there.

In the spirit of "pics or it didn't happen," here's a few pictures I took last weekend. I don't have the notebook in my possession currently, but will hopefully post updates should I manage to do this correctly.

Thanks for reading this far and I appreciate any advice you might have.

EDIT: Eventually figured out how to include the pictures!