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Vent: A full box of comics got soaked in the rain last weekend
I was carrying about 40 issues from a local flea market near Portland back to my car when the sky just opened up. The box I had was cardboard and it fell apart before I could get the trunk open. Water got into about half the books, mostly 90s X-Men runs I had scored for a dollar each. I spent two hours that night carefully separating pages and laying them flat with paper towels between them. Has anyone else had luck saving water-damaged comics with this method or a better one?
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oscar_ellis16d ago
Man that is just heartbreaking, especially for a dollar bin score on 90s X-Men. I had a similar thing happen but with a stack of old MAD magazines I found at a garage sale, got caught in a downpour and they just turned into these weird pulpy blocks no matter what I did. I tried the paper towel method too and honestly it worked okay for some of them but the ones that were really soaked through just never dried right, the pages got all wavy and stuck together in spots. My buddy swears by putting them in the freezer after blotting them, something about the ice crystals not expanding as much or something? He salvaged a bunch of old Punisher comics that way a few years back.
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simon_coleman16d ago
Yeah but is it really that serious though? I mean theyre dollar bin comics and MAD magazines, not like we're talking first appearances or anything super rare. Paper towels and a fan work fine most of the time, you just gotta be patient. Freezer trick sounds like some old wives tale to me, ice crystals are gonna mess with the paper fibers no matter what. You ever try just flattening them under a heavy book after theyre dry? That always fixed the wavy page issue for me.
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