Dean Hanley: Hi! I am Dean Hanley, owner of deanscards.

com. Today, we are talking about collecting sports cards. Now I am going to show you how to protect maintain and display your sports card collection.

If we are going to put the time, money, and effort into collecting sports cards, we have to protect them and display in proper way. There are three things that causes damage to sports cards. One is handling a rare. These are two cards I collected as kid. You can see I handled them pretty well. This exactly what you don't want to do.

My mother even made me put my initials on the back of the cards so they won't get mixed up with other kids' cards. This is a great example what you don't want to do. This Pete Rose in beat-up condition is worth almost nothing, especially with the ripped off corner whereas a nice pristine Pete Rose card is protected in soft sleeve. So while storing your cards you wants keep them in a nice dry climate control place.

The other thing that destroys cards is light. Please be aware, especially if you are collecting cards for investment that light overtime will destroy cards and drastically affect their value. It's important to consider what's your objective. If you are looking to display the cards, this is a good way to go. If you are looking for an investment, you might want to get your cards professionally graded and incased like we have done with this gaudy Babe Ruth card.

Another option for your sets or your cards is put them into 9 sleeve binders. This way you can look at the cards and enjoy them. They won't become faded, they won't be handled. Most of the plastic protects the cards from light also.

Up to this point we have talked mostly about vintage cards. These are the cards you have to be especially careful to protect, because they have the most value. Most of the newer or less valuable cards will be find in set boxes. These will protect the cards and they come in all shapes and sizes, and if you like it you can even put them in soft sleeves inside the boxes.

Some of your options for your cards are the soft sleeves and semi-rigid sleeves. These are especially effective for the smaller size cards, because they keep them from sliding inside the case.

Another option for the more valuable cards is the hard sleeve. These protective cases come in all sizes and shapes and there is quite of selection out there. For extremely valuable cards you can use the screw down case. This is about a half an inch thick and should protect your cards for a long, long time.

Caring for collection is so much common sense. One thing to be sure to do is clean your hands, get the oils off your hands and handle the cards as least as possible. One question we get a lot is should I open my modern factory sets. In my opinion the answer is yes. Cards are definitely worth more in the self-framed packages, but fun of card collecting is to get in there and enjoy the cards. Look at him, go through them, have fun with them.

So in a lot of cases these modern cards, I would just break them out and enjoy the cards. If you find something incase that's many years old, especially vintage cards, you probably do not want to break those out for investment reasons. So those are the basics of maintaining, protecting, and displaying your sports cards collection. Next, we are going to look at determining the value of that collection.