The four letter word - - - - MOLD
 

Leon please move if needed but I thought this might be a good spot for this and helpful to others.

I recently moved (a few years ago) and the items I had in storage for about a year recently started to show signs of mold. Mostly couches (leather/pleather), but it soon spread to other things (shoes/clothes/suitcases/bags/etc.) and even to some of the binders. It is in a couple of rooms in the house....but not awful. It is also not black mold. My concern, other than any health issues, is will it attack my cards....as it has already gotten the better of a couple of binders. I have not seen any issues so far and I try to circulate air and get sunlight into the 2-3 rooms that house most of my collection.

Almost all of my stuff is in Binders/toploaders in showboxes/sealed sets/boxes in plastic storage bins. When you have 1 million+ cards they are not going to all be sealed as such. So my questions are:

Has anyone ever dealt with this before?

What did you do to get rid of it (I do clean with alcohol and other bacteria killing cleaner at first sight) and did it work?

Has anyone every had cards that were affected?

Moving all of this isn't an options so looking for alternative suggestions.

Thanks

I've never dealt with it before. But I'm curious if you could give us a little more color here. Where do you live? Is it an area that is particularly moist/humid? Did you have any water that got into your storage area, like from a leaky roof?

It's certainly something that I'm a bit paranoid about. Since I live in Portland, OR, it's certainly a possibility, and something I want to make sure to avoid.

Keeping them in a humid area can ruin cards even if still in sealed boxes. A few years ago a member sold several sealed boxes he had had for 25+ years. He never noticed it but when several of us received those boxes they reeked of stale mold. Of course the seller felt bad and refunded all of us.

I tried a few things but what worked best was to lay them out in the sunlight on my picnic table for a few days. Then after putting them back in the box I left them outside in the sun for several more days. Nothing else worked for me.

Live on the San Diego coast....so about as perfect weather as you can get. Pretty much between 60-80 all year. Entire house has new HVAC and was re-built from the studs about 2.5 years ago.

Had three ways I moved stuff from my old place to the new place:

1 - 2 large PODS containers (mostly household goods) which I can imagine after 18 months caused most of the damage to the furniture

2 - Large temperaature controlled storage unit (15Lx12Wx12H) which is where most of the cards were held for 18 months and anything of considerable value was in storage bins

3 - Remaining clothes/household stuff/cards were with me in temporary housing

Noticed the mold about a year after moving in and started with shoes and couches ...then binders...some clothes. The furniture that was in the PODS was all that was affected...and I am guessing the super spreader of the problem. Also as might be expected the rooms that got the least amount of sun/activity got hit the worst. I don't want to paint an awful picture....but it was enough to be slightly concerned. that and even after deep cleans I'll see a hint in some of the same rooms months later.

For the record...have not seen any issues with cards and have no water or moisture issues in the house ....at all.

Have mostly seen it affect clothes and leather-ish type materials.

I used a q-tip on a mouldy T206, pretty straight forward to get rid of it, only time trying.

https://i.imgur.com/vzotG46.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/EPdcnnM.jpg

Humidity %
 

What's the humidity in these areas? High or low?--average temperature ?

By the coast in Cali, high moisture, so high and corrosive that there are special construction guidelines for things like flashings and waterproofing materials. What the OP should do (we all should) is get some commercial silica dessicant packets and seed them throughout storage bins and boxes. That should help mitigate moisture in the boxes especially. Thankfully, I more or less live in a freakin' desert, so I've never had an issue, but I still keep dessicant packets in my safe deposit box and other storage. Cedar blocks too, to ward off any moths or other pests.

I spend half the year in Southeast Asia, usually split between the Philippines and Thailand with the other half of the year in the US, during MLB season.

SE Asia is hot and humid year round, although the worst months are when we are in the US. April-September temperatures will generally be between 92-100F with 85%+ humidity. The cold season which is now is around 85-92F during the day time, but humidity is much lower, usually 40-50%.

Mold is constantly a problem although worse in the rainy season. The main things we do is make sure the rooms of the house are getting circulation and we also run dehumidifiers. The dehumidifiers are mainly run in the bedrooms while the main living area (living room, dining room, kitchen) we will have ceiling fans running and also use the air con consistently. When we are in the US, since its SE Asia and labor is cheap, we have year round household help. The main job when we are away is for them to be mold busters. Running the dehumidifiers at night, ceiling fans and windows open during the day getting circulation, etc. Also, we move all furniture away from the walls while in the US, pretty much congregate in the middle of the room. This is one of the keys that really helps us as you will find most people who leave for extended periods, will have mold growing behind the furniture within a week or so. I'm also allergic to mold which I never knew until I moved to SE Asia decades ago. Same feeling as someone with Asthma so I am told.

As for the sports collection, this is kept in the US. Sporting events that I typically attend in SE Asia are quite a few of the OneFC events as well as boxing, especially when Pacquiao was doing the majority of his fights in Macau. All of the tickets to this events never survived the humidity, in fact, the ink vanished off of those tickets within 1 year. Im in some ticket groups and I use those as examples as to what the humidity can do to collections. Sportscards will warp very easily here.

The only main collection we have in SE Asia are Persian carpets which also need to be protected from the mold. This is a constant battle, but again it falls back to air circulation and sunlight and dehumidifiers. Besides mold, moths are another issue.

There are some good points in this thread, but you may also find the dehumidifiers to be a big help. Just get ones with a large enough reservoir so you dont need to keep dumping out the water multiple times a day. Also, for cleaning any mold, we keep it simple, a mixture of vinegar and water. Ive been told though that this type of mixture is not effective towards all kinds of mold but for us it works.

Good advice. I likewise put desiccant packets in my safes, safety deposit boxes and storage boxes. I learned the lesson from a fellow collector who keep items for 20+ years in a cool, dry basement in a fireproof safe and still had serious problems. Its a small price to pay. Two greatest enemies of ephemera: sunlight and moisture!!

There are many great, inexpensive marine grade (used on boats) gel packs available. Here's a pic of a fine, cheap product, available on ebay for $9. In areas of relatively low humidity, they can last 5 years.

I think you need to hire a remediation expert for a home inspection. This is definitely a signal of a a larger problem in my mind.

I agree. I think I'm more concerned about your health than the cards. I would think that living with so much mold could lead to serious health issues.

I use plastic tubs similar to this with desiccant to protect my 3d print media from Spring time humidity here on the east coast. I've found they help protect my ABS during storage... might help you with your cards?

https://www.amazon.com/IRIS-Weathert...s%2C110&sr=8-8

Also... asking a remediation expert to assess for mold and fungi is a bit like asking a fox to watch your chickens. If you think that you may have a real health issue, I suggest an indoor air quality inspection first (3rd party consultant) and go from there. Remediation outfits will always find a problem to get the work even if it's not necessarily needed imo.

That's really good. I have never tried getting mold off of a card. Did you use the Q-tip dry?


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