Search
Related Links



    

Informative Articles

10 Things I Don't want to Hear This Baseball Season
It’s Spring; always a great time of year for everybody! Our customers on the East Coast and the Mid-West are thrilled because the long winter is finally coming to an end. For the rest of us, we get to be excited because baseball season is starting....

In baseball, how does a pitcher throw a curveball?
In baseball, how does a pitcher throw a curveball? A successful major league batter gets a hit only 30 percent of the time he comes to bat. One of the ways pitchers lower these chances even further is by throwing a curveball. A curveball is...

My Prize Piece of Baseball Memorabilia
My Prize Piece of Baseball Memorabilia Back in the day ... I used to deal in baseball cards, and some memorabilia in the mid to late 1980's. Through an old client I had the opportunity to sell a very rare piece of baseball lore. The piece that I...

NBA Notes (March 23rd)
Could the NBA regular season end a couple of weeks earlier? Yes. The season now ends on April 20 and the playoffs begin April 23. If the regular season ended on April 6 it would fit nicely with hoopla that surrounds the NCAA’s men’s Final Four...

The Great American Pastime; Watching
The great American pastime is watching sports. Someone once described a football game as 30,000 people in desperate need of exercise watching 22 people in desperate need of rest. No matter the sporting event, Americans love...

 
How to Care for Sports Memorabilia

IT'S NOT JUST A HOBBY, IT'S AN INVESTMENT!

Many collectors of sports memorabilia have their collections in their homes or offices without really showing regard to the preservation and the protection of the items.

I was watching an old black and white movie recently and the scene was a newspaper guy's office in the fifties. A visitor walks in and as he chats with the news-guy, he casually picks up a baseball from an eggcup type of stand on his desk and turns it over in his hand and glances at it. I think the conversation went something like this " Freddy where did you get this, it looks like it's got Yankee signatures on it?" Freddy catches the ball that the visitor tosses over to him and says, "Yeah I think it's from the late forties, my Dad had it and I sort of inherited it." I'm watching and even though it's a movie I'm saying YIKES, Freddy, put that thing in a proper container, you keep throwing that ball around the office and before you know it, bingo, no signatures left!

WHAT'S AVAILABLE TO PROTECT COLLECTIBLES?

1. If Freddy had that ball in his office today, he could buy an acrylic display case similar to the ones found on www.sportsplayer.net, and he could then show the ball to visitors without fear of harming the signatures or the


ball itself. 2. Watch the lighting where you display your collections. If fluorescent lighting is nearby, consider replacing it with regular household lighting as fluorescent lighting has ultra violet rays that may damage your display, especially if it carries an autograph. Natural sunlight is even more likely to harm your display, so be sure to keep your collection as far away from direct sunlight as possible. 3. Store your collections in an area that is as close to normal room temperatures as possible. Have you ever been to a store that sells old books? Notice that smell? Often they will take delivery of books that have been stored away in a box in someone's dank and dark basement. Smells like mould, right? Humidity kills collections!

If your hobby collection is not quite a big investment yet, it has the possibility in the future of being worth quite a bit of money. Be sure to pay attention to the physical protection of your sports memorabilia. Also, talk to your insurance agent to see if he can offer a rider to you that will cover the loss or damage of your collection.

About the author:

John Paul writes for Sports Player Network (SPN). SPN specializes in Authentic Sports Memorabilia. For more tips and information, visit the SPN website at http://www.sportsplayer.net

Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.