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Permalink Reply by JAKE JONES on December 14, 2012 at 7:41am

Don`t touch the balls with your fingers, use gloves, as oil off your fingers will spot the balls , don`t display in direct sunlight, will fade signatures, place them in ball crystal cases to avoid dust and don`t store them with a lot of humidity. Hope this helps!

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Badour on December 14, 2012 at 8:10am

Thanks for the tips, it does help. I hadn't thought about wearing gloves, but that makes a lot of sense. Thanks again, I appreciate it

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Permalink Reply by Null on December 14, 2012 at 8:31am

I've ran into some issues lately with autographs I had framed. I went to switch the frames on a few, and the picture/graph had been stuck to the glass...

Any tips on this? Obviously I want to display my autographs...

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Permalink Reply by Fuddjcal on December 14, 2012 at 10:25am

yeah, don't use frames with glass. For good photos use Archival UV plastic glass....or Scan the pic and print it out on photo paper and store the photo in a top loader. I have 32 photo in my office. 9 are professionally framed and nice. I generally try to keep them out of the sun and have been lucky none of those have faded. The ones with glass are certainly subject to fading and I have had a few that had.

The thing I love about printing out the photo is that they generally look better than the original and they won't fade. As you know sharpie, will fade easier than regular ink.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Paul on December 14, 2012 at 8:36am

Ultra violet light is the main culprit and that comes from both sunlight and most artificial light sources.  The old fluorescent lights were among those worst for that. 

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Permalink Reply by Eddie Anderson on December 14, 2012 at 8:58am

Franks autographs have great preservation and protection material for memorabilia.

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Permalink Reply by Fuddjcal on December 14, 2012 at 10:19am

I love showing mine off in a 30 ball case (in UV cubes) and 6 of my favorites on my filing cabinet in steiner display cases. The 30 ball case gets light all day and I don't care. I have some of my good balls in there too. Others, like my 7 Mantles, 4 Dimaggio's, & 4 Williams...you get the idea of the sickness, are in a plastic storage box, in uv cubes. It holds 36 balls and that's my limit.

Some balls in general are worse than others, just based on luck. I have had more trouble with the new Selig balls toning and autographs disappearing right off of them more so on the older AL/NL balls. The William White, Giamatti & Coleman balls are tough to find in pristine condition, but it's my experience that they usually stay that way and the signatures don't fade even when displayed. If I think they are starting to fade at all, I put them in the "box" and display another one. If they fade to the point it bugs me, I sell it and buy another.

Rarely does the autograph fade or AL/NL ball tone even when they are displayed when they are purchased in good shape from my experience. As far as touching them with gloves, I never do that. I love to rub my grubby paws all over them  and haven't noticed a correlation between handling and toning....

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Permalink Reply by Null on December 15, 2012 at 9:49pm

Do you think putting a plastic sleeve on the photo before framing would help the sticking issue? Or will it stick to the sleeve?

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Badour on December 16, 2012 at 12:04am

Eddie Anderson mentioned Franks Autographs, so i googled it and that website has some really good info about why photos stick and what to do to prevent it. Check out this video --- http://www.franksautographs.com/ --- and this page as well --- http://www.franksautographs.com/Polyester-pockets.html

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