Bought a $40 longbox from a yard sale, ended up with mold everywhere

Last Saturday I stopped at a yard sale in Arlington and saw a longbox stuffed with old issues for only $40. I flipped through the top few, they looked fine, so I grabbed it without checking deeper. Got home and found the bottom three rows were all warped and covered in black mold spots. The smell hit me as soon as I opened it in my living room, and now I'm worried it got into my other boxes that were nearby. I tossed the ruined comics but the box itself was beyond saving too. Has anyone else dealt with mold creeping from a cheap haul, or is there a way to treat the survivors without ruining the ink? That $40 lesson stings, especially since the good stuff on top was mostly 90s filler anyway.

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amy3028d ago

Man, I've been there with a box from an estate sale that looked clean on top and was basically a petri dish underneath. What worked for me was isolating the survivors immediately and wiping them down with a dry microfiber cloth, then bagging each one individually with fresh bags and boards. For the ones with just a little spot on the cover, I left them out in direct sunlight for a few hours on a table, that killed the mold without hurting the ink. The key is not to use any moisture or cleaners, that just smears the mold deeper into the paper. Also, check your other boxes right now and quarantine anything within five feet of where you opened that thing, mold spores travel like crazy. I lost a few good books that way before I learned to store everything in those plastic bins with silica packs, it's a pain but worth it.