Wired Wiki- How to store your comics

Store Your Comics Properly

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Photo by Troy Brownfield/Wired

All right, admit it: you're smart enough to know that your comic collection probably won't make you a millionaire. On the other hand, you enjoy the form and you want to keep your books as nice as possible. What can you do to keep your four-color wonders safe and secure?

Here's our guide. Got additional advice? Log in and add it.

Contents [hide] 1 Bags and Boards 2 Common Sense Handling 3 Temperate Zones 4 Filing 5 Organization

Bags and Boards

Photo by Troy Brownfield/Wired

Bagging and boarding is essential for long-term maintenance. A few companies produce items for this purpose; Kevin Brydon of the Comic Carnival chain in Indianapolis recommends the BCW family of products. "We especially like the boards, which are guaranteed to be acid-free," he said.

Bags and boards serve a few general purposes. The bags keep your books free of dust and offer a general layer of environmental protection. A bagged book might not completely survive a coffee spill or burst pipe, but you've given it a chance. A book bagged with a board will "store straight", keeping it sharp and preventing excess wear on the binding.

Additionally a bag will slow the chemical reactions that occur due to moisture and oxygen. If you cut down the flow of oxygen or water to acidic paper then the chemical degradation will consequently by decreased. This is especially important since so many comic books were printed using acidic/wood pulp paper.

Common Sense Handling

I'm not going to go so far as to suggest the use of white gloves when handling your comics. Still, washing and thoroughly drying your hands first to prevent oily smears remains a must. Careful page-turning rather than whipping right through an issue also goes a long way toward keeping the book in good shape.

There's an extra element here. Older books tend to have been made on cheaper grades of paper. Those books tend to be more brittle and require greater care. Of course, older books are also typically worth more. If you have limited storage or care space, you might want to take care of older (or more valuable) books first. Simple date-checking or research in something like the annual Overstreet Price Guide might help you determine where to direct your limited resources.

Temperate Zones

Photo by Troy Brownfield/Wired

Conventional wisdom dictates that you store your comics in a cool, dry place. Hot and steamy might be good for the Jacuzzi, but not Jack Kirby. Slightly below room temperature (72* F) is typically a good guideline. It's also not a bad idea for your storage space to use soft light when possible.

Humidity can be a danger. That's why some prefer to tape their bags shut in the hopes of closing out excess moisture. Climate-controlled storage would be ideal, but a well-ventilated, cool, dry closet area would still work.

Filing

Photo by Troy Brownfield/Wired

A bagged and boarded book can be stored standing or stacked. Most fans prefer some filing method, as it allows the titles to be browsed easily. The traditional "long box" or a legal filing cabinet work well, but we like the new DrawerBoxes, which bring a lot of design sense to the old cardboard box. The 9" x 26" long version can hold 235 bagged and boarded comics; its encased design actually turns a cardboard long-box into a stackable filing cabinet.

Organization

Actually, that's up to you. Plastic dividers are also available, ready to be labeled alphabetically, by company, or broken down into team affiliation by universe. Not that we know anyone who does that.