So I normally have a dehumidifier on at all times in the room with my cards. However, I’ve been without power for 3 days because of Hurricane Isaias. And now I’m remembering exactly why I had put on a dehumidifier in the first place:
Now all my cards are like this (besides ones in binders, which seem to be mostly unaffected). This attached photos are of a card from the middle of a stack of hundreds of cards. The whole stack is equally warped. Is this sort of damage reversible? And if not, what do I do with these things? Do I sell them as damaged? Throw them away? Pretty frustrating…just happy my more valuable cards are in binders, but still annoyed.
Sorry to hear that, and I hope you’re safe from the hurricane!
Definitely don’t throw the cards away - people will have different suggestions but I’ve had luck straightening cards out by placing them inside books and adding flat weight on top. Put the card in a sleeve first for protection. Leave them like that for a few days and see if it helps.
I don’t know how many cards you have but the answer might be to keep them all in binders or toploaders to prevent warping.
100% safe; thanks for the well wishes! I’ll give the book suggestion a shot! I’m not sure if that will work, though, because the warping is due to moisture? All of my cards are like this, even ones that were at the bottom of 1000+ card stacks.
Which cards (set) are you referring to that are having the issue? I ask because that’s the natural holo curve for Team rocket and Base set 2, and also some modern cards have this issue directly from the pack.
The pictured card is Gym Heroes 1st Edition, and the stack has some Challenge in it, too. The other stacks are mainly e-Series and have the same warp. No holos in the stacks. Usually they are totally flat
I don’t think they look that bad to be honest, but I have a suggestion if you want to try something. Put 1 or a few of your warped cards in e.g. a ziplock bag and also put a silica pack in it before closing it up. Then wait and see if the dry air in the bag will reverse the warping.
Just make sure to not leave it for too long as this will dry out your cards a lot, eventually causing them to self-ignite and then your house will burn down
Every card; almost all non-holos. I’ll order some silica packets; i used to use them to dewarp MTG foils, but this looks more like damage than warping to me.
@zorloth I don’t think you have much to worry about. Once your A/C & dehumidifier kicks back on just bring it down to lower than 75. After about a week they’ll go back to the way they were.
The moisture will be drawn out of the cards once the relative humidity level in your home reaches around 35%. Once you draw the humidity out put everything in ziplock bags soas to avoid future exposure to high humidity. I live in Florida where the humidity is often 100% through the summer (right now it’s dry but still at 100% humidity) and keep most loose cards inside ziplocks and have no issues. Either way what you’re looking at isn’t permanent damage.
Super relieved to hear that; thank you! Yeah, I’m at about 70% humidity right now. Was at 90% or so before I got my generator working. Usually, I try to be at under 50%, which is why I was worried that it was so humid that the cards got moisture damage.
Ziplock bags are a good suggestion; only issue is if they get even the tiniest hole or anything, then they lose all efficacy. I imagine that it needs to be 100% airtight to work. I could try vacuum-sealing maybe
Were these cards in top loaders by chance? When I first got back into collecting I put my entire collection at the time in top loaders stacked in sets of 10 cards. I had about 100-150 cards at the time. Now either because they were stacked on top of each other or because of the top loader itself a lot of them warped. They did straighten back out under books. But after that I stopped using top loaders all together. Hope this info helps others. And like I said it could have been from simply stacking the top loaders.
Yup! Both MTG and Pokemon. jkanly was 100% correct – all of my cards are back to normal now. But I think it also depends on how long the cards were warped. My cards were only exposed to the crazy humidity for like 2-3 days, but if they were exposed longer it’s possible the damage would’ve been permanent.
Yeah I thought the holo foil layer is separate (for MTG and Pokemon) and gets stretched when they absorb moisture and this causes the warping. I wasn’t aware this process could be reversed. Good to know!
Yup, definitely reversible – unless it’s warped to the point of damage, of course. Another way to unwarp cards is silica gel packets, which some people swear by.
