postcard.co.uk

Hello all. I am new to this forum. I live in Dorset, am an American daughter of English father who was born in 1902. I have a very old album of postcards that my father collected as a young man, mainly around 1920's. Some cards are older, some a bit newer, all sorts of styles. They are still in the original album, which is literally falling apart. The pages are loose and brittle and crumbly. Yet for some reason I can't bring myself to take all the cards out. They were so carefully saved by my father so many years ago. I would say it is a real treasure of my father's history.

Please advise me on whether to take them out and toss the old album or are they best left as they are? Does it even matter?

Thanks in advance for your help. I am enjoying reading the postings on this website.

Current thinking is that paper collectables including postcards and photographs should be stored in inert or acid-free materials.

Old albums are caertainly not acid free, but we constantly come across collections that have survived well for the past 100 years or so with hardly any effect on the cards as a result of being stored in paper pages.

If your cards are in good condition now it's certainly possible they could survive apparently unaffected in the album for much longer, if kept in a fairly stable enviroment of temperature and humidity and away from strong light.

However the fact that the album is crumbling is not a good sign.

Some more info in an article I wrote a couple of years back...

http://www.sunnyfield.co.uk/dayspast/archival.htm