Storing Methods

[Visitor Q]

Tabloids are fairly big items to store, how do you store yours?

Jason

[over40artist]

Unlike comic books, I store them flat (horizontally). I am still looking for the perfect "bag and board" system for them. Anyone else have success with that?

[Brother J]

Anyone ever buy any "Life Magazine" bags? I think these might be big enough for tabloids.

[Visitor Q]

I have Mylar bags from E. Gerber and custom backers cut for them, E. Gerber made them as well.

Here is a picture where you can see the backer but the Mylar sleeve is a little tough to see:

http://headcomix.info/wiki/doku.php?id=gothic_blimp_works_2

My only complaint about the Mylar sleeves is that they can be as sharp as a razor blade with that old paper! You really need to take care when pulling tabloids in and out of the bags.

After that, I store them flat, stacked in a draw.

The cost of Mylar can really add up, especially when incasing your whole collection in it.

Jason

[Brother J]

yeah, mylar is pricey, I only use it for my best (ie. most valuable) books.

[Visitor Q]

I just recently moved my whole underground collection into Mylar. I know if cost me hundreds of dollars since I now have over 1000 items, I also moved some of my independent books as well. The UGs got all Mylar and then I picked and choose with the other books I have. I was worried since these books are not getting any younger and if damage is to be caused to them, I would rather it not be from storing them incorrectly but that it just my thoughts.

Jason

[Reverend]

I, too, use mylar sleeves courtesy of E. Gerber and can attest to them being like razor blades. While carefully sliding a 1974 issue of NME (complete with a copy of the comic Flash Fearless Versus the Zorg Women Parts 5 & 6) into one, one of the edges snagged and proceeded to be cut through like a warm stick of butter. Luckily, I stopped it before the comic could be touched.

[Visitor Q]

Yeah I love tabolids and all but you got to be very careful with them.

Those sleeves are real nice as you can stack and store them flat. Not sure if you are interested or not but they will also cut backers for them as well. They are real nice and I find sliding the tabolids in and out a little easier but the down fall is you can no longer see the backs of the tabs. No really a big deal, just like comic books and backers.

Jason

[gump]

I keep mine in a hermeticaly sealed box filled with argon...

[Visitor Q]

I keep mine in a hermeticaly sealed box filled with argon...

Ahhh... Are you shitting me?

Jason

[Brother J]

I keep mine in a hermeticaly sealed box filled with argon...

Ahhh... Are you shitting me?

Jason

he wouldn't shit you, you're his favorite turd... 

[Visitor Q]

Let's hope for are sake that is not just a PA expression.

Jason

[jaylynch]

Mylar is inert, yes...but the flaps are cut so that air and pollutants can get in the top...and Mylar isn't optically tinted with dyes that filter out ultraviolet light.  UV light causes acidification to kick in.
      So what I did is I got clear poly bags from Bradley's Bag Company in California which are a few inches taller than the newspapers.  The newspapers are then bagged in these polybags.   Piles of these polybagged papers are then bagged in opaque black polybags which I also got from Bradley's 40 years ago.
       The result is that after 40 years, the newspapers have not decomposed at all and look like they were printed last week.  The black bag protects the polybag and newspapers from ultraviolet light, thus delaying the acidification process...which is also delayed by the sealed inner bag, which keeps out humidity and pollutants.

[Visitor Q]

Jay... Does that really matter much about UV light when these are stacked and stored in a draw away from the light?

Jason

[jaylynch]

Light bends.  They should be stored the same way photographic paper should be stored.
In l910, they made something called "humidity boxes".  These were similar to the boxes that photo paper is stored in.  They are light proof...air proof...and the inside of the box is black.
      Consequently, the things Marcel Duchamp stored in humidity boxes (even though they were on newsprint) survive until this day.  They don't make humidity boxes any more...so I would have to recommend the next best thing, which would be old large size Kodak printing film boxes.  Since things have gone digital, though...these are hard to find now , unless you go to some printer who has been in business for 50 years and hasn't thrown anything out.
       In l976, paper manufacturers began adding chemicals to newsprint to make it decompose faster.  Environmentalists loved this.  Although of course it meant that historical records contained in newspapers wouldn't survive.  But even with the new chemicals added to newsprint...oxygen and ultraviolet light are necessary to start the decomposition process.
         Then there are deacidification chemicals manufactured in Japan. Many are illegal here (ostensibly because of their toxicity)...but archiving newspapers isn't encouraged in the U.S.     There are still archival supplies that work available in France and the U.K., however.
            There are all kinds of archival supplies available in the various library catalogs here.  Unfortunately, no one item works.  You would have to use combinations of several items. You can get black plastic boxes that are not free of migrating acids, so you'd have to use it in combination with mylar bags.  You can get acid-free buffered boxes that aren't light proof...so you'd have to put them in black plastic bags.  This is not a good country for archiving stuff.  But since the dollar weighs light against the Euro, and will continue to do so...all our archives will wind up in France or England some day anyway.