Tips for Taking Care of Baseball Cards

by bobcadsmith

Taking great care of your baseball cards can maximize the value of your collection. Baseball cards lose a lot of value when they aren’t properly handled and stored, even minor damage can drastically reduce values.

Baseball Card Holders are the First Line of Defense

Baseball card holders are covered in extensive detail throughout the rest of this site so I won’t go into it again here, but no guide for taking care of your cards would be complete without at least mentioning them. The better the baseball card holders and baseball card protector sheets (for binders) that you use the better your cards will hold up over the long run.

Be Very Careful Inserting and Removing Cards from Top Loaders and other Holders

Always be sure to use the correct size baseball card holder for each card, using the wrong size can easily damage the card.. Cards come in various thicknesses so use holders or sheets made for that thickness card. Visit this site for an overview on baseball card sizes.

Resist the urge to insert and remove your cards from their holders frequently and you’ll lower the risk of damaging the cards quite a bit. It can be hard to resist sometimes because we do love to take them out and look at them up close but the fewer times you are handling them the less likely they’ll get damaged accidentally.

Use hard plastic baseball card holders for cards that young kids might want to handle. It would be no fun for kids if they couldn’t ever handle the cards, and baseball card collecting is mostly about fun afterall, so using the proper cases allows kids to be more involved without feeling like they can never touch anything.

Tips About The Storage Environment

Keep your cards in a dry location that doesn’t have significant variations in temperature. Wild temperature swings can be damaging to cards.

Security should also be taken into account when considering the best place to store your cards. Keeping your more expensive cards in a secure and fire-proof location will give you a lot of peace of mind in case the unthinkable happens. For extremely valuable cards the same care that would be taken for any priceless collectors item be it a piece of art or what have you. A bank or other secure location might be the best option for those cases.

Teach Kids How to Care for their Cards

Collecting baseball cards with your kids can be a wonderful experience, helping them learn how to care for their cards in a fun way only makes it better. Consistently showing kids how to handle all cards carefully, not just the high value cards, is a great way to help them learn. Giving kids a chance to handle low value cards without their cases, and handle them carefully, will go a long way towards making the experience fun while instilling good habits for later down the road when they’ll be handling more valuable cards.

To learn more tips for taking care of baseball cards visit this site with info about baseball card holders.