Moisture: the safe deposit box's worst enemy.

[itjclarke]

Originally Posted by glchen

Hi Ian, I didn't remark upon this in your original thread, but you live in San Francisco, I believe, and I live near you in the Oakland/Alameda area. Is there really that much humidity here? The Bay Area practically has the same temperature all year round, and even during the wet winter months, I don't think the humidity is all that bad. If it's more inland, I could understand. I don't bother with desiccants for my card collection. However, I do have a growing stamp collection, where I am thinking of desiccants as I think the gum on the stamps may be much more sensitive than cardboard stock. However, as long as I keep my cards in a living area or at the bank safety deposit box, I'm not too worried. (I do admit my garage does become hot and humid sometimes as there is not much air circulation there.)

Hey Gary, agree there is definitely not the hot Houston style humidity here (went running in Houston 3 weeks back, sheesh), but plenty of cool air humidity... and extreme micro climates (SF and Oakland can be different worlds) as I'm sure you know. I lived for years in what had been a brand new apartment building in South of Market (near AT&T Park), where it's generally sunnier than the west side of the city. That place always felt dry, and while living there I'd honestly never even heard of desiccants, let alone considered using them. I'm now over in Cole Valley, bordering the Sunset where we get a lot more fog. Our building is also much older and poorly insulated compared to my old one. The stuff in my closets, and especially my 1st floor building storage gets and stays pretty moist, even when sunny out. I started to use those carboard box/pouch desiccants here for my closet and within a few days that little strip starts to go from blue to pink. I have had a few autographed balls go south on me since living here, so I moved them all to a separate storage unit over in Protrero/Dog Patch.

That said, I think whatever's going on in my bank's vault (which is central in a large building) has very little to do with the local outdoor climate and probably more to do with whatever is going on in the bank itself. For one, there's a Starbucks in the lobby, with lots of steamy lattes and mochas being made all day. The vault entrance also looks to be surrounded by the bathrooms. Not sure if either of these things contribute, but would think any sort of open water source and/or condensation within the building could create some humidity.. heck, even a coffee maker in a room with no windows or ventilation will probably make it pretty humid. That WS ticket stub was fine in its sleeve for about 2 years in my apartment, but within a 6 mths- 1year of depositing it in my bank, it's front had completely stuck onto the plastic case. It tore off completely when I tried to remove it. I definitely don't have an inner guage for relative humidity, but know when I feel it.. and it feels a little stuffy in that vault as compared with the rest of the bank.

Anyway, my original reason for posting that thread was to see if anyone else had experienced anything like me with desiccant (or whatever they were) beads, and know I'm definitely not complaining about my bank or safe deposit boxes in general. I like my bank, have had my cards there for years, and don't really want to go through the process of finding a new medium/large size box. Wait lists are apparently long, and I'm pretty sure I'm grandfathered into a nice rate. Another minor consideration being in SF, was elevation and good bedrock, which is good come earthquake/tsunami time... and my bank's definitely got that. All in all, I feel much safer keeping my most valuable cards in a box there, and the issue has not seemed to affect much else.

I will say this though, and think my experience backs it- it seems to me moisture can be present anywhere (bank vault, storage unit, etc), regardless of where you live or the weather. Again just think coffee maker with no windows, or a leaky pipe, or whatever. If it makes you feel a little more secure using some desiccant packets (it does me), then you should do it. If not, I'm sure it'll be fine most of the time too.

Bill--- again, hope this doesn't make you paranoid, your box will be fine... and I highly doubt you'll have bags of beads liquify on you!! Seems I'm the only lucky one there.

[Tao_Moko]

Stache - FireKing is one of the many items that I rep commercially and I live in a very humid and salty environment. The Dry-Packs should be more than sufficient and it is a good idea to create a barrier between your cards and the box bottom. I would not recommend bags or tupperware.

[Jobu]

A safe way to use the silica gel beads is to buy a plastic tupperware container, poke a lot of holes in the lid, and put the silica beads in there with the lid closed. It will still be open to the air but ought to contain all of the gel in case of what seems like a fairly rare meltdown.

According to Wikipedia (proceed with some caution), there appear to be a few things that react with silica gel: "Silica gel is non-toxic, non-flammable, and non-reactive and stable with ordinary usage. It will react with hydrogen fluoride, fluorine, oxygen difluoride, chlorine trifluoride, strong acids, strong bases, and oxidizers."

My guess is that the inital meltdown was due to one non-silica product accidentally being mixed with the silica, causing the problem. For those that use dessicants I would recommend using only a single product rather than mixing multiple products. Also, as I think I mentioned in my post in the original thread, the dessicants that look a lot like cat litter are primarliy composed of non-dessicant material - you can get dessicants that are pure silica gel and therefore pack a lot more wallop per unit volume.

So, after all that babble, my suggestion to Bill is not to put your collection in containers but to put the gel in one instead. That way the cards are more open to the air. When working in the tropics, at the end of the day I always put my gear in an airtight bag with a container of gel and it always worked great (given the conditions I just used a sock but never had any issues - I would not recommend that for cards).

For a follow up question and a bit of a piggyback, does anyone know how water proof PSA, SGC, etc slabs tend to be? Are they even open to the air? If they are fully sealed that would influence concenrs about humidity and exposure to the air.

[ALR-bishop]

In 1993 I lived in St Louis and they had a lot of flooding that year. I had an uncle die that lived in a suburb called Lemay . I was his executor, but his bank with his estate papers was flooded. It was almost 3 weeks until the waters receded enough for them to reopen the bank, and since the safety deposit room was partially under water there were delays in getting access and box holders had to make individual appointment to get into the vault room and check their stuff. You could see the water line that went half way up the rows of boxes. I had no idea where his box was located, but fortunately it was up high near the ceiling, well above the water line. I saw others going through boxes that had been under water for 3 weeks and all the paper documents were completely destroyed.

Since then I have always made sure my boxes have been up high in case of flooding , sprinkler issues, fire ( water to put it out).

But since I have collected each and every Topps set and have them in binders for easy access and display, I have never used my safety deposit boxes for cards. I do keep all my documentation of the cost basis of my cards in the box, and carry insurance on it all.

[glchen]

Thanks, Ian, I got it. That definitely makes sense.

[bcbgcbrcb]

Having worked in banks for 25+ years, I can tell you that vaults do not have any air control system inside so the summers during overnight hours can get pretty hot inside and the winters are the opposite, depending on the climate where you live.

[frankbmd]

Bill,

Protecting your collection from a thermonuclear weapon or an electromagnetic pulse might require additional measures.

[conor912]

Originally Posted by bcbgcbrcb

Having worked in banks for 25+ years, I can tell you that vaults do not have any air control system inside so the summers during overnight hours can get pretty hot inside and the winters are the opposite, depending on the climate where you live.

Sounds like attic/basement/garage conditions to me.

[e107collector]

I've used one of these for many years. Just plug it in to reactivate every month or so. I love it!

http://www.cabelas.com/product/Liber...t=dehumidifier

Tony

[itjclarke]

Originally Posted by Jobu

A safe way to use the silica gel beads is to buy a plastic tupperware container, poke a lot of holes in the lid, and put the silica beads in there with the lid closed. It will still be open to the air but ought to contain all of the gel in case of what seems like a fairly rare meltdown.

According to Wikipedia (proceed with some caution), there appear to be a few things that react with silica gel: "Silica gel is non-toxic, non-flammable, and non-reactive and stable with ordinary usage. It will react with hydrogen fluoride, fluorine, oxygen difluoride, chlorine trifluoride, strong acids, strong bases, and oxidizers."

My guess is that the inital meltdown was due to one non-silica product accidentally being mixed with the silica, causing the problem.

Interesting, thanks for posting Jobu (and awesome username!). My wife had kept this stuff in a ziplock under our kitchen sink where there's plenty of weird stuff, including strong bases and/or acids in all of our cleaning stuff. It's also pretty moist down there, so suspect some things may possibly ooze or precipitate into others.