Cards that CAN and CANNOT be soaked?!

[Runscott]

deleted due to lack of interest. I realize that the photo-restoration and soaking posts are only of interest to a limited number of members. I have a mailing list of such members and in the future will only send this type of information to that group.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by Runscott

No. When we say "soaking" we are talking about water only.

if water takes off ink that came from a pen and the water removes the ink..its ok correct..

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

if water takes off ink that came from a pen and the water removes the ink..its ok correct..

Good question. My personal opinion is that soaking with water is fine, regardless of what it removes (if it's a card type we have identified as 'soakable';e.g-T206). For soakable cards it's not going to remove anything original to the card. T205's are the exception in my opinion - if you aren't careful, bits of print lettering will come off the back.

But if you soaked a T206 that had ink writing on it, and the ink became faded or blurred, it could be obvious that it had been soaked. I've never run into an example like that, and not sure how PSA or SGC would react to it, but to me it would then just be a matter of aesthetics. Also, if it's water-soluble ink, you could run into more problems when you try to dry it and the ink is wet.

[tiger8mush]

sorry if I missed it, but what about E121s? Has anyone successfully soaked one without issue?

Thanks!

[obcbobd]

Originally Posted by tiger8mush

sorry if I missed it, but what about E121s? Has anyone successfully soaked one without issue?

Thanks!

Hi

I just bought a group of 27 cards that were glued into a 1922 bankbook (same as notebook paper). 20 E121s and 7 E220s. They all soaked fine. Using some of the previous posts as a guide, here's a step by step rundown of what I did;

I started with paper pages with cards glued, at about 5pm.

4 by 4.jpg

I filled some pans with luke-warm water, and put individual sheets, each having two cards per side into the water.

dish.jpg

The pages floated, every now and then I pushed them down to the bottom. I left them in for about 15 minutes. I then picked up the sheets and it was quite easy to pull the cards, very slowly, off the sheets, except for one sheet, that one I soaked for another 20 minutes. The backs of the cards still had glue residue on them. I gently rubbed that off with a paper towel and put the individual cards back in the pan, after refilling with clean water.

IMG_1739.jpg

I left the cards in water for another 15, took them out, put them in between paper towels and topped with books.

books.jpg

I changed paper towels after an hour, and again around 9pm. The next morning they looked and felt pretty good, but I still changed the paper towels and let sit for another day.

Below are the end results

front.jpg

backs.jpg

Thanks

Bob

[Harford20]

I have seen some soaking experience comments on Old Judge, Mayo, etc.,
but not much on the 19th Century Trade cards. I have seen a few "really beat-up" folios/albums that are falling apart, yet there are some trade cards I would love to salvage and add to my collection.

Does anyone have experience soaking the really flimsy trade cards (i.e. Baby Talk, Brownies, Tobin Lithos, Cosack & Co or Sporting Life) from older album pages?
Some of these safe to soak? None of them?

Thanks
Dave

[trdcrdkid]

Dave --

Most of my soaking experience over the last 20 years has been with trade cards, and a pretty large percentage of the trade cards around today were soaked out of albums, much more so than with tobacco cards. I generally haven't had any problems with any of the standard types of trade cards, which would include the baseball trade cards you mention. My first soaking experiences, 20+ years ago, was with an album of trade cards and other ephemera where the pages were brittle and falling apart, but the cards were fine; I didn't have any problems soaking them, and most of those cards are still in my collection today. I posted this description of how I do it in one of the recent soaking threads:

http://www.net54baseball.com/showpos...70&postcount=7