All's Quiet on the Football Front

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by obiwin

@jeff Those are really neat. I really like movie lobby cards in general, they usually have interesting images and the 14x11 makes them easier to collect and store than movie posters. In another life, I could see myself collecting lobby cards.

You hinted at "cleaning" them up for display. I'm curious what kind of cleaning methods are you considering? I'm usually too scared I'm going to damage something to even think about cleaning it up.

Didn't mean anything sinister. Just going to look them over and decide how to make them present well. Things I've done in the past for items I planned to display:

1. Overlap the edges with a mat when framing to hide edge wear, small tears, stains. I might decide to mat these tight around the images to remove as much staining / writing as possible.

2. Depending upon the weight of the piece, material, printing technique, consider lightly cleaning the surface with water if I think I can remove dirt or staining. Don't know if I would risk giving these a bath, though. I usually experiment with a small corner that I'm planning to mat over anyway just to see what is possible to clean off.

3. Realign any large tears so they aren't as visible

4. Use a backing that matches the background color of the piece so any holes or large tears are less noticeable

I've framed a few "rough" pieces using this approach and they turned out pretty good! Of course, there are professional restorers out there that can do all sort of interesting things to items but I've never used any of them so don't know what else is possible. Plus I like items that are in their original state ... not something that has been doctored.

jeff