card saving inception dates?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by oaks1912

K & M Company in Torrance, California produced baseball card specific plastic sheets (PVC) around '73 or '74. They were sold separately and part of a package with a thin vinyl album that contained all of the Major League ball logos. The only size initially available was a 9 pocket sheet for standard sized cards. These were sold at toy stores, such as Toys R Us. Within a few years different designs and sizes were introduced by a few companies. ...Prior to these sheets, I used a 6 pocket vinyl sheet initially designed for Polaroid snapshots. These were sold at drug stores (either Walgreens or Woolworths)... Fortunately I removed my cards from these years ago. An unfortunate side effect is that these sheets probably destroyed more cards that they saved. During this same period photo albums with peel back plastic sheets (covering adhesive strips) were introduced for photos. Unfortunately this method of storage destroyed the value and condition of even more cards. While cards were very inexpensive in the 70's (compared to today), the storage methods introduced during this period were very destructive long term. It will be interesting to see how professionally graded cards hold up over time. After all, plastic is a petroleum product and tends to destabilize over time...

That's the album I bought in 74.

The next generation of pages was done by a couple companies, primarily Rotman which was/is in Worcester Mass. They were a waterbed company that moved into making hobby pages right as the hobby page market get going and the waterbed market was shrinking.

Made from PVC just like the waterbeds only clear. Flexible PVC has an oily plasticizer to make it flexible, and that usually isn't good for the cards or whatever else is in there. Some get stuck, but are removeable since it's just the air having been squeezed out from between the card and page. Others got wrecked by the plasticizer leaching out and getting into the card or removing some of the ink. The lucky ones had the page dry out and become a bit brittle.

The albums that were really horrible were the "magnetic" photo albums with the diagonal sticky lines on the page. Stuff always got stuck and removing nearly always ends up with paper loss. It's far worse with thin paper items. I bought a whole album full of old car ads in one of those, and eventually sent it on it's way intact since I couldn't remove any of the ads. I'd heard that putting the whole thing in the freezer would help, but not with that one.

Steve B