How to Store and Protect an Autograph Collection

Light

The main one. Ultraviolet fades ink faster than it fades an image, so a signature can ghost while the photograph still looks fine. Direct sun is the worst case; a bright room over ten years does the same job slowly.

Heat and temperature swings

Attics, garages, lofts and exterior walls. Cycling between hot and cold moves paper and lifts emulsion.

Humidity

Damp brings mould, cockling and foxing. Very dry air makes old paper brittle. Stability matters more than any particular number.

The wrong plastic

PVC sleeves off-gas and can bond to a photograph's surface. Use archival polypropylene, polyethylene or polyester sleeves — nothing marketed only as "vinyl".

Acid

Ordinary card, wood, newsprint and cheap mounts all migrate acid into whatever they touch. Backing boards should say acid-free and lignin-free.

Adhesives

Tape, glue, self-adhesive "magnetic" albums and mounting corners with gum. All of them stain, and removal usually costs more than the damage.

• Handle by the edges, and support the whole sheet. Vintage paper tears under its own weight.
• Clean dry hands, or cotton gloves for anything vintage or fragile.
• Never eat, drink or smoke around the collection, and keep it off the desk you work at.
• Do not flatten, trim, clean, erase or "improve" anything. Every one of those is a permanent deduction.
• Never write on the back of a photograph, including to record provenance. Record it in your inventory instead.
• Let anything that has come in from the cold acclimatise before you open the packaging.

• Individual archival sleeves, one piece per sleeve, so nothing rubs against anything else.
• Flat, in a rigid archival box, in the main body of the house — an interior cupboard beats an attic every time.
• Never rolled. Rolled photographs and posters crack along the curl and never sit flat again.
• Stacked lightly. Weight and time leave permanent impressions.
• Bulky items — scripts, props, three-dimensional pieces — supported rather than resting on an edge or a signature.
• Away from exterior walls, water pipes, radiators and anything with a heating element.

A collection you never look at is a storage problem, not a collection. Display is fine — display carelessly is what costs money.

• UV-filtering glazing, always. It is the single best money you will spend on a frame.
• Never hang in direct sunlight, and rotate what is on the wall so nothing takes years of exposure.
• Acid-free mount and backing, with the piece held by archival corners or hinges rather than stuck down.
• A spacer or mount so the surface never touches the glazing — photographs bond to glass and come off in pieces.
• For a piece that matters, consider displaying a high-quality copy and storing the original.
• Keep frames off bathroom, kitchen and exterior walls.

Half of what a collection is worth is what you can prove about it. That half is the part that gets lost when a collection changes hands, and it is the cheapest to maintain.

• One inventory line per piece: signer, format, size, inscription, condition, source, date and price paid.
• Photographs of each item, whole and signature close-up, stored somewhere other than the same building.
• Certificates, receipts and correspondence kept with the item and referenced in the inventory.
• A current valuation if the collection is insured — an unvalued collection is effectively an uninsured one.
• A note for whoever inherits it, saying what it is and who to call. Collections are most often sold badly by people who did not know what they had.