It's Time To Crack Out Your Graded Cards

[Wil]

Whenever anyone does anything, there is a reason and there is a REAL reason.

“There are other reasons why cards in slabs are removed,” explained Sue MacKay, director of Collections at the Hall of Fame Museum. “For instance, thicker slabs require more storage space, but the main reason we do it is we’re just not sure if the slabs might eventually damage the cards.”

The REAL reason they're doing this is storage space. Everything else is just made up so they sound like they know what they're doing.

[Yankees1964]

I did like the idea about drilling a hole in a ball cube though. I'm not a big autograph person but have some key ones.

[drcy]

The most common cause of damage to cards is handling them. So if they're in a holder of any reasonable kind, it's best they stay there.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Yankees1964

I did like the idea about drilling a hole in a ball cube though. I'm not a big autograph person but have some key ones.

Just do the drilling without the ball being inside...

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by Yankees1964

I did like the idea about drilling a hole in a ball cube though. I'm not a big autograph person but have some key ones.

In case anyone is thinking of doing this, a trick I learned about drilling into plastic with a regular spiral twist drill bit is to run your drill in reverse, as the heat from the friction of the drill bit will 'melt' the plastic, and will not grab (and potentially crack) the plastic, as it might do if running the drill in the forward setting.

Brian (your friendly Net54 non-cracking plastic drilling expert). Bonus fun info: if drilling rubber freeze the item, as it will also make grabbing less likely. I don't think reversing drill bit direction is necessary.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Wil

Whenever anyone does anything, there is a reason and there is a REAL reason.

“There are other reasons why cards in slabs are removed,” explained Sue MacKay, director of Collections at the Hall of Fame Museum. “For instance, thicker slabs require more storage space, but the main reason we do it is we’re just not sure if the slabs might eventually damage the cards.”

The REAL reason they're doing this is storage space. Everything else is just made up so they sound like they know what they're doing.

Hmmm.....

Or I can believe the advice from oh.... like every conservator, archivist, curator....

Library of congress doesn't worry much about issues of storage space. But they do worry about acidity of paper items, so much so that they tried to develop a system to de-acidify books in massive quantities. It wasn't very successful.

[Mark]

Most of my collection is in 3 X 4 Top Loaders. Are they any safer than the slabs?

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by Mark

Most of my collection is in 3 X 4 Top Loaders. Are they any safer than the slabs?

It also says in the article that: "Another chemically inert product is polypropylene, which is slightly less clear than polyester like Mylar, but is also considered acceptable for long-term preservation."

Binder pages and penny sleeves are made out of polypropylene. So, if you want to keep using the top loaders, you could put the cards, as many do, in the penny sleeves before you put them in the top loaders.

I also just put them in the top loaders also. I'm not going to worry about it. I like the immediacy so to speak, of just putting the card in the top loader and going through and looking at the cards that way. It's the closest to how we handled them as kids. But that said, I do also have a lot of cards in binders!