[jchcollins]

Hi Rick,

I must admit I'm fascinated by the whole "archival" subject as it involves cards, so I will send you an email and take you up on your offer. I've been meaning to try something mylar for probably the better part of 5 years now, but never have gotten around to it.

As for the overall, I know it's been debated in other posts here even on Net54, but my questions around doing something like this wholesale, all-in, say I take the couple hundred "valuable" unslabbed cards in my vintage collection now - most of which reside in standard Ultra-Pro toploaders and penny sleeves - and make the investment of time and materials to get them all into mylar - will naturally come down to whether or not it's really worth it for me to do this? I'm familiar with the proposition of a museum being interested in preserving something for the next several hundred to several thousand years - while if we are being honest, I'm interested mostly in preserving this Roberto Clemente card, and that Johnny Bench card - for er, maybe the next 50 years tops. Longer than that if I get my daughters interested in my card collection and I can then pass them on, but honestly who knows. They are interested in legoes, makeup, and clothes at the moment...

So really - am I going to see any difference in the appearance of my cards under magnification in the next 40-50 years or so, with my nicer (say EX, EX-MT) cards from the 1950's and 60's if I take the time to switch everything to mylar? I'm not even talking about keeping them in their SAME penny sleeves and toploaders for that period of time. I'm a bit more anal than that about my hobby supplies - and being someone who looks at their cards frequently, has been known to change holders due to minor aesthetic issues, flips through stacks of toploaders a lot, even carries / transports cards around at times - I can assure you that I am FAR more likely to change out my entire collection of toploaders and penny sleeves every 5-7 years than I am just to leave a random Mickey Mantle card sitting, collecting dust on my shelf in the closet in the same sleeve and holder for the next 30 years. I like nice looking cards, and nice looking holders. So my question really comes back down to - is it worth it? What if I set my Apple reminders to change out all toploaders and all penny sleeves with totally new product every 5 years? Does that help? From all I have ever seen, even with older stuff and PVC - you really have to be careless for quite a few decades, as well as unlucky - to get a holder to disintegrate to the point where it actually produces a noticeable effect on a card.

I guess in the end right now, I'm just not convinced that I need to make an overall painstaking investment in mylar, when I'm going to very much likely be dead in 50 years, or shortly thereafter. Does that make sense? Going to the LCS or even freaking Walmart to restock on "standard" hobby supplies - even repetitively - would seem to be a lot simpler. I will admit I might could be convinced though, if Rick's product is easy to use and works with conventional larger holders to put the mylar into.

Thanks for any thoughts.