The advice my uncle gave me about bagging comics back in 1988

When I first started collecting, my uncle told me to always store comics in Mylar bags with full backer boards, not the cheap poly bags. He said the poly bags would yellow the paper over time. I thought he was being dramatic, but 20 years later I pulled out some books I had stored in poly bags from the early 90s and they were all a shade of light brown. The ones in Mylar looked like they just came off the press. Has anyone else run into this kind of storage issue with older comics?

3 comments

3 Comments

violamurray27d ago

Your uncle was absolutely right, but here's the thing I don't get. Why did the poly bag industry keep pushing those cheap bags for decades if they knew they'd ruin books? Seems like they could have warned people on the package or something. I've got a whole box of late 80s comics that turned brown and brittle, and it makes me sick every time I flip through them. The Mylar bags cost more but they're basically airtight, so the paper doesn't react with the air over time. Did your uncle use any special kind of backer board or just the standard ones? I've heard certain boards can leach acid too, so maybe that made things worse.

joelwells27d ago

Standard acid-free backing boards are the only safe bet for long term storage.

margaretm2327d ago

Your uncle was totally right about the poly bags yellowing things over time." I learned that lesson the hard way too when I dug out some old 90s X-Men issues that were all brown and brittle.