How To Care for Memorabilia 5 important tips By Katherine Golovinova
People collect memorabilia to treasure memories. Sports fans and movie lovers alike treasure such acquisitions and strive to keep the items in pristine condition. No one in their right mind would want to spend thousands of dollars on a ‘Honus Wagner’ baseball card and then let it decay due to lack of care and attention. This is where preservation, conservation, and restoration of memorabilia come in. First, let’s take a look at what each of these terms mean then I’ll give you some great tips to take care of your stuff.
The Cracked Football Sports memorabilia, in particular, needs frequent restoration if its not cared for. Frequent restorations often reduce the value. Items like signed baseballs and footballs are made of materials like leather that can crack if they are not stored properly. General care of leather footballs is a relatively easy process that one can perform his self by keeping it clean. But before you put on oils and leather treatments, here’s your important 1st tip: do a little test with the leather dressing and a Q-Tip (in a non conspicuous place) to see how badly the leather might darken! Obviously, your football’s value is because its is signed. Applying a dressing may darken the leather and make your signature much harder to read. Also, many ball point pens are dissolvable in leather dressings and you could smear some of your signatures. So beware, when someone tells you to wipe your baseball or football down with oil, to add recoloring balm or to apply leather dressing… do a small test first and then ask your memorabilia dealer his/her opinion before setting up your little restoration corner. You could wipe out your investment with a rag.
Ticking Time Bomb Items such as posters and cards are susceptible to decay due to the acids in the paper which makes some collectibles printed onto low quality materials into a ticking time bomb. The browner the paper looks, the more acid it contains. The acid causes increasing brittleness and can change the color of what is printed, resulting in the inevitable loss of value of a collector’s precious item. Great tip #2: Neutralization or deacidification of the acids is an option if the paper is not coated and should be of utmost priority to any collector worth his salt.