removing cards from plastic sleeves

[sof2xlc]

Long time lurker here. decided to ask a question and sign up
.I have found my baseball card album for the first time in yrs. Thats the good news the bad news is that it smells and many of the cards are "stuck" to each other inside the 9-card pocket sleeves as well as in the single plastic sleeves. Dirty flood water has seemingly gone thru this binder...there are some that the outside of the car seems to be cracking into pieces, some are curld alittle and no longer flat. others have dirt on em. but most of these cards are stuck due to the new orleans humidity. Some i was able to remove from the sleeves but they are flimsy. i guess the water damaged the paper. Anyways my question:

are there anywys to "save" some of these cards or remove them from these sleeves?
Has anyone else had a problem like this?

Thank you inadvance

[Dodgerfan1]

Long time lurker here. decided to ask a question and sign up
.I have found my baseball card album for the first time in yrs. Thats the good news the bad news is that it smells and many of the cards are "stuck" to each other inside the 9-card pocket sleeves as well as in the single plastic sleeves. Dirty flood water has seemingly gone thru this binder...there are some that the outside of the car seems to be cracking into pieces, some are curld alittle and no longer flat. others have dirt on em. but most of these cards are stuck due to the new orleans humidity. Some i was able to remove from the sleeves but they are flimsy. i guess the water damaged the paper. Anyways my question:

are there anywys to "save" some of these cards or remove them from these sleeves?
Has anyone else had a problem like this?

Thank you inadvance

Welcome to BBF, sof2xlc. I'm not an expert, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the cards that have been damaged by water are unsalvageable, as far as being able to restore them to any vestige of their former glory. Especially dirty water such as you describe. If you are determined to 'save' whatever you can, you might want to flip through the pages and see which cards are less damaged than others. As far as removing them from their plastic sheets, again I'm no expert, and I'm not aware of any miracle solution that would help separate the paper from the plastic without further damaging the cards, but I would think that if you began slowly peeling the plastic away, and the card sticks to it, the card is beyond salvation.

If you are intending to remove the cards to have them as keepsakes, that's one thing, but if you are looking to salvage any value they may have lost, I can't think of any way to do that. Just my two cents. You have my condolences. I had a cherished BB card set ruined by water damage, myself once! It's a disheartening feeling....

[DaClyde]

While it won't help with the existing damage, you might try cutting the pockets of the pages away from the cards with sharp scissors or a razor blade. But if the water was as bad as you think, there's likely nothing salvagable here.

[MadHatter]

Depending on the cards, might be better just to trash the whole lot. For example if they are from the mass-produced sets from the 80's then they probably aren't worth too much anyway. What cards are they?

[sof2xlc]

thanks for the input. they are mostly for keepsakes. some of my cal ripkens were kind of valuable 5-10 bucks on beckett. i had some fernando venezuela autos and some jaime moyers and a joe torre auto but i lost all my randy johnson omar vizquels griffeey(greatest next to the Babe) long story short i had em organized by teams
so it was the orioles mariners rangers indians yanks some bosox. few expos. i had a lot of yanks and indians cause i liked em growing em. i am i guess keeping as a reminder and stuff but i would really like to some how really replace the ripkens cause he was a great player and person. um i guess cutting the plastic is my only solution but that doesnt solve the cards are stuck together problem. these are mostly early 90s to mid 90s cards with a sprinkle of 2000s.

[stang05]

if you want that back so bad in good condition check out ebay you may be surprised or even a local dealer that always have commons