Baseball cards can be worth a lot of money. This is especially true as the cards age and they start to become rarer. However, if you do not take proper care of your baseball cards, it can severely reduce their value when you are ready to sell them. In order to prevent this, it is important to keep the cards in a protected environment where they will be free from damage. Here are five tips you can use to ensure the cards you put into storage stay in mint condition.
1. Keep Them in a Dry, Dark Environment
One of the most important things you need to do is to keep your cards away from any type of humid environment. Humidity will rapidly destroy your cards. It is also important to keep the cards in a dark place out of the sunlight. The UV radiation in sunlight will rapidly yellow the cards. Whenever you are not looking at them, be sure to keep the cards away from any light sources. One of the best places to store your cards is in a climate-controlled self-storage unit.
2. Keep Them off the Ground
An important step you need to follow when keeping our old baseball cards in self-storage is to keep them off the ground. This ensures that the cards will not be affected by moisture if the ground in the unit happens to get wet. It also prevents them from being damaged if you drop something on the ground in the unit when you are inside of it.
3. Use Plastic Sleeves
One of the best ways to ensure that your old baseball cards remain undamaged while they are in storage is to encase them in plastic sleeves. These plastic sleeves come in a wide variety of styles. One of the most popular styles is the page sleeve. Each page sleeve holds nine cards, and you can put the page sleeves together in a ring binder. This allows you to attractively display them and keep the cards organized by players and teams.
4. Double Sleeve Especially Valuable Cards
If you have any baseball cards that are especially valuable, you need to give them extra protection. The best way to do this is to double sleeve them. First, place the card in a floppy plastic sleeve. You can then place the floppy sleeve with the card inside a hard plastic sleeve. This double layer of protection gives your cards extra security and gives you peace of mind.
5. Acid-Free
No matter what you store your baseball cards in, make sure it is free of acid. Any type of acid will rapidly damage the cardboard that baseball cards are made from. Your best bet is to go with the plastic sleeves that are specifically designed to be acid-free.
If you follow these five tips, your old baseball cards will stay protected for decades. Keeping them safe is the only way to ensure that your cards retain their value over the years. A little bit of protection can prevent major damage while they are in storage.
