The great debate: should you bag and board every single issue or just the valuable ones?

I've been thinking about this since last month when I visited my buddy's collection in Pittsburgh. He's got 30 long boxes and every single book is bagged and boarded, even the $1 bin filler issues. I argued that's overkill, waste of plastic and money. But he pointed out that three years ago he found water damage in one box and the bags saved 90% of the books. So here's the thing - I normally only bag what's worth $10 or more, but I've also had a $5 book suddenly jump to $40 after a movie announcement (like that Moon Knight issue I missed). On the flip side, buying 500 bags and boards at $20 a pack adds up fast when you're talking about thousands of books. Do you guys bag everything or just the stuff with value? Has anyone had a cheap book get ruined and regret not bagging it?

2 comments

2 Comments

tara74525d ago

Started bagging everything after a flood scare last year - a pipe burst in my basement and ruined a stack of unbagged dollar books I had sitting on a shelf. Those were cheap, sure, but it still stung losing a complete run of that old Spectacular Spider-Man series I was slowly filling in. Now I buy those bulk packs of 100 bags and boards from my LCS when they have sales and just do everything as it comes in. Peace of mind is worth the $40 a year or whatever it ends up costing me.

michael_patel25d ago

I actually read somewhere that humidity is a bigger threat than people realize. A collector on another forum tested his basement and found it was at 65% humidity even without any pipe issues. Thats way too high for long term storage. He said paper starts getting that musty smell and pages can warp at around 60%. So now I keep a little digital hygrometer near my boxes and run a dehumidifier if it creeps up. Your pipe burst story really drives home how fast things can go wrong though. Its not just about the bags they help a little but you still gotta watch the room itself.