The 41st Co(s)mic Comic Book Broadcast: Using the right bags and boards

This is a topic I wanted to talk about for a while now.  As you may or may not know, recently I had to move my collection out of a cupboard, I used this cupboard as a place to store most of my comics.  Now some of these comics were bagged and boarded, many however were not.  My fault, I knew I should have bagged and boarded these comics but I am a procrastinator and always said I'll do it tomorrow, maybe next week, next month, next year and so on and so forth.

I noticed that many of these comics of mine had a very stubborn residue on them and some had this weird stain on them, many of them had yellowed over the years even the ones with the bags and boards.  Well when I moved my comics, I noticed the situation and condition was much worse than I thought, much much worse.  The damage was extensive.  It broke my heart to see these comics, many are beyond repair.  It's my own fault for initiating my own repair program so to speak by using tape to fix these comics, I showed your pictures of my stupid plan in my previous broadcasts.

Like this one, I used tape on it because the cover was coming loose, I read this issue at least a few hundred times.  Things like this, finding comics in this condition in my cupboard just broke my heart.  The isn't even the worst of it.  As I mentioned many of my comics were not bagged and boarded but a few were, I bought some so called "recommended" bags and boards.  Looking back now I should have just spent a little bit more on proper bags and boards instead of the home made boards I bought, like these:

When I bought these backing boards, I was told these were the real thing and acid free and what have you.  I bought a few and started putting the comics I bought in the bags and boards, well, for a while there it looked like I bought some good bags and boards.  The comics were well protected and they were in great shape.  Well, that's not how it turned out.

I don't know if you can see it but the boards started developing some yellowish stains on them, thereby affecting the comics as well.  For some reason, these boards also left a residue on the comics, a dust like stain which is very hard to remove.  I tried.

Now these boards scare me, look at that!  Look at how the boards have turned yellow and looking at these pictures made me realize what else was turning yellow along with the boards.

I think this scared me the most.  I noticed that the stains weren't random on this one.  Then I looked at the comic and realized that the cover was ON the backing board, the stain wasn't just a stain anymore, it was a copy of the ad you see on the back of a comic.  I don't know what caused this, I guess the cover had somehow stuck to this backing board and the board now had absorbed the ink or whatever from the cover.  I forgot to mention that I had to slowly peel away this backing board from the comic.

Now I tried to take a shot of this dusty stain on almost all my comics but to no avail. It doesn't show up clearly when I take a shot, here's one example.

The stains just don't show up for some reason.  When you run your hand across the cover, you can definitely feel that grainy dusty feeling and there's a lot of it on your fingers.  I knew something was wrong because this is a glossy cover and there shouldn't be any grainy dusty feeling on a glossy cover.  Sorry I wanted to show the stains on this cover but I guess I'm not that good of a photographer but I'll keep trying.

I found out that more of my comics have these stains on them and it just makes me feel bad that I didn't get the right kind of bags and boards.  Even though I did eventually get some recently, I hope it's not too late to save them, so take it from someone who is a procrastinator, don't delay, if you want to keep your comics for the long haul, get the right ones.  I made the mistake of believing the words of people who wanted to sell their own homemade boards and bags and look where that got me. 

If you come across the same problems with your comics, share them with me, would love to know how you solved this problem.  Thanks for dropping by and having a look at my broadcast, remember drop by anytime, you're always welcome here.  Take care.