A Few Tips For Properly Caring For Your Football And Baseball Card Collection

A collection of football or baseball cards can represent a financially and emotionally important investment. This requires you to understand the appropriate steps for storing and caring for these cards. Otherwise, you may find that their condition suffers drastic degradation, which could negatively impact the value of the cards.

Know The Steps For Proper Humidity Control

Humidity is easily one of the more common threats to a baseball or football card collection. High humidity levels can cause the paper in the cards to absorb moisture. Over time, this will cause the colors to fade and the paper to decay. To keep the humidity as low as possible, you will want to store the cards in a climate controlled case. Furthermore, you should place humidity absorbing gel packets into the case. While these cases will be relatively costly, they can be essential for keeping your cards safe. Fortunately, it is possible to purchase extremely large versions of this case, which can accommodate extensive collections of cards.  

Invest In Individual Sleeves For The Cards

In addition to having a large case that can hold all of your cards, you will also want to have an individual sleeve for each particular card. These cases will prevent staining, bending and other forms of damage that could occur to the cards. If you are finding it difficult to afford buying these sleeves for all of your cards, you should prepare a list that prioritizes your cards by value. Over the course of several weeks or months, you should buy some sleeves when you have additional money and work your way down this list. This will help to ensure that your most valuable cards enjoy this type of protection.

Avoid Leaving The Cards Exposed To Sunlight

When you are considering locations for storing your baseball or football card collection, you need to ensure that you are avoiding placing them in the direct path of sunlight. The sun can bleach colors out of paper over long periods of time. For football and baseball card collections, this can be a devastating problem as it can render the cards unreadable or cause enough damage to drastically lower their value. While storing the cards in a dark area may prevent this damage, it can make it extremely difficult to show off or display your cards. Fortunately, you can also choose to buy individual cases that reflect ultraviolet light, and these will further mitigate any bleaching that occurs to the cards.

Check out companies like BEGC Sports Cards for more info.