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Fire & Water: And autograph Collectors Worst Nightmares

We are here because we collect autographs....pretty simple. Storage for your collection has been covered, time and again. The proper ways to frame with acid free materials and UV protection, where to display, and if you should use a 3 ring binder with acid free pages or an Itoya art portfolio.
 I know that everyone collects in different quantities, maybe you frame everything, maybe you frame copies of you most valued items? My question to each of you is how do you store those truly one of a kind "can't ever replace it" kind of items?   There are plenty of fire-proof & water-proof chests, boxes and safes, and the vast majority of them are now designed to protect digital media and documents. 
Paper burns at 451° F, and as such most of these safes will protect the contents for up to 30 minutes in a 1500° fire. The catch here is that the interior of the safe can reach up to 350° in that fire. Photographs and digital media are only really protected if they are kept below 125°-150°. The majority of these fire boxes don't specify the UL rating, just that they are UL classified. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is a non-profit organization that tests these safes and plenty of other stuff to verify that the manufacturers are meeting an industry standard.
Finding the proper storage, which will keep your treasures safe, will certainly add to the price tag. If UL 350 is pretty standard, then you can imagine what UL 150 or UL 125 will cost.  That means interior temp is kept to 350°, 150° or 125° in a house fire (usually 1700° for an hour)
I have been giving this a good deal of thought lately and I am really curious about the way you store your items? In one of these safes? in a fire-chest? in the closet?
I am a big fan of UltraPro pages (acid fee, PVC free, UV protection, blah blah) but if I store my valuable autographs in these pages and then place them in a fire safe......and a fire occurs, will these pages melt my collection together into an unrecognizable glob? 
I can't seem to find any reliable info on this matter. Opinions? Experiences? I would love to hear your thoughts. 

Tags: Fire, Safes, Storage, Water

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I just keep everything in a big closet!Pics in Itoyas, lps,cds just stacked.Never had a problem for years but I do check everything.

I've gone through the same exercise. While a safe may technically keep photographs from burning, the internal temperatures still get high enough to bake the photos. 

A giant floor safe with the highest possible ratings would likely keep the items undamaged, but it would cost many thousands of dollars.

I think a bank safety deposit box for the very best items and collectors insurance is the way to go.

On a side note, but good to know...

There was a collector on the CGC Chat board who had a bunch of CGC 9.8 books... very valuable key issues. He keeps the slabs in a safe. After a year or two he takes the books out and notices the staples are all rusty inside the slabs. They were not rusty before obviously.

The fireproof safes are filled with some material that absorbs and releases humidity (like concrete). It created such a humid environment inside the safe that it rusted the staples on the comics within a year or two. Something to bear in mind with signed photos... could the humidity cause foxing or other damage to the photos?

I'm afraid there is no easy answer.

I owned one of those safes, i actually think it was bomb proof as well. Everything was fine until the mechanism jammed up and i couldn't open it.They do have there problems associated with them, there's no air circulating in them.
This is the worst part of collecting in my opinion is trying to preserve these autographs. I just put the autographs on my insurance in case North Korea drop the nukes.

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