I have put together this article after many requests from clients about the right and wrong way to store your much-loved autograph collection. Too often I have seen wonderful old items that have been poorly stored or displayed, reducing them to second-rate junk, fit only for the 99 pence bin!
It takes little effort to store them in such a way that ten years from now they will still look as good as they do today. If you are spending a lot of money on autographs and intend to pass them on to other people, or perhaps redeem them as an investment later, take the time to save them carefully, I promise it will be worth it!
I’m only going to cover the storage of autographs and signed photos within the sleeves on these pages, as the storage, preservation, framing, mounting, and repair of these things will be covered in a separate article. The article may seem a bit too technical at times, but I think by giving you the facts, you are much less likely to use the wrong products.
So how do you currently store your collection? Is my money in PVC sleeves and ring binders? Or maybe just a cheap wallet from a chain store or worse, an old cardboard box? Well I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that all of these methods are degrading your collection as we speak.
So let’s start with those covers as they will do more damage to your collection. The most common type of plastic sleeve is made of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) or at least a very similar material, meaning that a ‘plasticizer’ has been added to it during manufacturing. This ‘plasticizer’ is what keeps the sleeve flexible, the more they add, the more flexible (plastic) it becomes, but unfortunately for us it also means that it has a similar effect on many of the inks that are used to sign autographs stored in them. Since the plasticizer acts as a kind of solvent in the ink, just like a solvent softens the paint.
This effect is particularly noticeable with paint pens and metallic-type markers, as the plasticizer will absorb some or even all of the ink, causing the ink to partially adhere to the plastic sleeve rather than the photo. The same plasticizer can, over time, also affect certain photographs and images, so you could end up with not only a disappearing signature, but also a disappearing or distorting image.
In addition, during the manufacturing process, the PVC passes through rollers coated with fatty acids (to prevent the material from adhering to them). Which results in both sides of the pockets (and this includes the top loaders) getting contaminated, and we don’t want fatty acids to come in contact with our autographs, right?
Note. Sometimes you can read that you can ‘smell’ cheaper sleeves, and that proper acid-free sleeves don’t have that smell, but that’s not entirely wrong, and it might as well have something to do with the ‘fatty acids’ mentioned! previously!
How many items should I put in each sleeve? Ideally just one, but we don’t live in an ideal world, so two photos in a row should be your maximum. If you do this, make sure that between the photos you put an acid and lignin free divider. Why? Well, photographic paper contains acid and lignin, and these chemicals degrade the paper turning it yellow (this is why old newspapers turn yellow). Therefore, having them side by side will age the photo paper twice as fast, causing your precious autographs to turn yellow even faster. Storing only two photos per cover will also reduce the risk of scratching each image when removing it.
If you store multiple photos on each cover, you may have noticed the way some signatures reproduce on the back of other photos. This is again caused by the chemicals within the photo papers acting on the inks, and is yet another reason why you should only store 2 signed photos one after the other in a single sleeve.
I also do not recommend storing more than one album page or signed card per cover, as I have seen the effects of one high acid sheet of paper on another when stored in this situation. Some inks can also be transferred from page to page so this is something to consider as well. There are special multi-pocket sleeves for smaller album pages, etc., so you don’t have to waste an A4 sleeve per item.
Because you can store only two photos per cover, it may be worth adding a divider to help prevent damage from bending and cross contamination. If you are going to do this, make sure the boosters you use are acid-free again; otherwise, you are simply taking a step back. You can buy acid and lignin free dividers for this purpose, and these are typically available from the same suppliers as the sleeves. See my note on this at the end.
The solution to the problem of covers is to use covers that are made of polyester, which is both stronger, optically much clearer, and most importantly, it does not contain those horrible plasticizers or fatty acids!
Polyester (synthetic rather than natural) is a type of plastic, most commonly sold under the trade name ‘Mylar’, although you won’t normally find that name in use. These polyester sleeves are more expensive, but in my experience they are stronger and will last much longer than cheap plastic sleeves from Staples or elsewhere, and of course they won’t harm your valuable collection either.
You’ll find polyester sleeves much more difficult to locate, and the Staples staff certainly won’t have a clue what you’re talking about if you order Polyester or Mylar sleeves, so don’t bother asking! You may find ‘copy proof’ covers, although I have never seen any that state they are polyester, and I think they are touted as ‘copy proof’ for the office market, and the wording of the backups refers to your safe. storage of photocopied items only. Even then I certainly hope they don’t have any kind of guarantee that it can actually mean anything! So my advice is to avoid them.
Now you might ask how I know what a polyester cover looks like if I’ve never seen one. Well, because they are more expensive than regular or garden PVC sleeves, they will typically be branded or sold as such as they are being sold with the conservation market in mind. Once you’ve looked at a polyester sleeve and compared it to regular cheap sleeves, you will immediately see and feel the difference in quality.
In case you are thinking of photo books or similar, I have looked at hundreds of photo albums in many different stores, from Harrods, to specialty photography stores, to commodities and even Poundland, and they were all the same: – cheap plastic, cheap cardboard pages, or even worse, those horrible pages with the sticky lines on them to hold the photos, ughhh! If you have your collection stored in something like this, slap yourself and order them right now!
Note. The frequently used ‘top loader’ is not made of polyester and should not be used to store your signed photos for an extended period of time. They can be useful for transporting newly signed photos from a show, but that should be your usage limit. Photos can also stick very quickly to top loaders, especially if the photos are newly developed and the top loaders are newly manufactured, so be careful! Top loaders are the hard plastic sleeves where only the top edge is open and are often seen at trade shows or some dealers to ship items.
So remember, its polyester sleeves that you are looking for if you want to save photos or anything with a signature.
One last thing, if we lived in an ideal world, we would always handle all of our inventory with lint-free cotton gloves. This is due to the amount of oils and other similar things that get deposited on our skin, which then pass into our precious autographs every time we handle them (did you wash your hands after eating that sticky bun?). Those fingerprints on all your photos are there because of all that junk, and much of it will damage your photos and it may become impossible to remove them later on. White, lint-free cotton gloves are readily available at any good photography store, not only will a pair last you a long time, but it will also prevent all of that grime from sticking to your valuable collection.
Everything I’ve written here comes from my twenty years of experience handling autographs and making the kinds of mistakes I’ve mentioned here. You can’t bake a cake without breaking the eggs, as they say, and I’ve certainly broken a few in my time! So I hope you take what I have written into account and that it helps you keep your collection in the condition it should be.
I hope you enjoyed this article and that it was interesting and informative. I’ll cover storage, preservation, presentation display, and mounting and framing in other items, so keep watching!
