OT- Near disaster with "desiccants"

[itjclarke]

Just getting back from my safe deposit box and apparently dodged a major bullet. Earlier in the day, I discovered water and sludge in and on boxes of memorabilia in my storage unit. After looking inside them, I realized it was coming from bags of a "desiccant" product which had basically liquified between now and probably May.

A few mths ago, my wife gave me a mixed bag filled with various dehumidification products. It included the little pouches that come in food/drug/etc, little tins packed w/ beads, and then loose beads she'd put in cloth bags (not sure where from but they looked the same as to ones you buy in pouches/boxes). It was the latter that failed.

As it is, I've got a few dozen signed balls, and game programs, etc that are soaked. Luckily most of the cards in those boxes are graded and look fine. If they'd been in top loaders, they'd be toast. I'm not sure as to the extent of damage within these boxes yet, because I left those at home and rushed to my safe deposit box. 80% of cards in my safe deposit are in top loaders and my best signed balls, including one my dad got of Mickey Mantle and his Joplin team as a kid in OK (priceless to me) were were in there. Luckily I discovered I had only used the desiccants in the tins there, and there was no such oozage/damage. It is blind chance that I had used one style of desiccant in the storage boxes and one in the safe deposit. Phew!!!!

I'll try to post more specifics once I get my hands of the product (name/type) my wife had given me that went bad.