An old comic shop owner told me to stop bagging my silver age books and I thought he was crazy

Guy named Jerry who's been running a shop in Portland for like 40 years saw me putting a 1968 Spider-Man into a new bag and board. He pulled me aside and said I was trapping moisture against the paper and it would yellow faster. I didn't believe him because everyone bags everything right? But then I checked some books I'd bagged 5 years ago and they had that brown edge thing going on. Now I only bag books from the 90s onward and leave my older stuff in Mylar sleeves with no inner bag. Has anyone else gotten advice from an older collector that went totally against what you thought was standard practice?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia6851mo ago

Man that Jerry guy sounds like he knew his stuff. I had a similar wakeup call when a flea market dealer in Ohio told me poly bags are terrible for anything before 1970 because the plastic outgasses something that eats the paper over time. Checked my early X-Men and sure enough some had that dreaded brown edge. Switched to Mylar only for anything silver and earlier about two years ago. Did you have to rebag a bunch of your collection or just start fresh from there?

the_joseph1mo ago

Gotta push back a little on this one. I've been using poly bags for decades and never seen the brown edge thing unless the book was already stored badly. I mean, I've got X-Men from the 60s in regular old poly that look crisp still. Idk, maybe its just my climate or something but I think people online blow this out of proportion. A lot of the Mylar hype feels like collector gatekeeping to me.

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