wax off, nylons, and an odd outcome

[jkk503]

I am starting with the assumption that where I am now, many others have already been and thus I am not sharing anything new. However, I'm seeing something odd and I've never read about it occurring before.

I read about using nylons to take wax off vintage card fronts, so I stole a pair of my wife's and got to work. After some practice, I found that I could de-wax pretty much any card front at least back to the early 60s. The longer it's on there, the tougher I find that it is; creases and corners are problematic. Now, I come from the coin world, where the whole guideline is different. Go to any coin board worth a G-4 1964 Jeff nickel and talk about abrasive cleaning, and everyone including me will tell you not to do it--and then to refrain from doing it, in case we weren't clear. Most of the time we are absolutely right. People imagine that q-tips won't scratch a coin surface--oh, yes they will. They think the coin needs to be "shinny"--most of them aren't real great spellers that way--and don't understand how ugly the cleaning makes their coins. So I was certainly delighted to find that if I did it sensibly, I could hose the wax off these card fronts. (Back, not so much.) Unlike coins, I couldn't even tell there'd ever been wax. And then I noticed an odd thing.

I found that the best method was to use a wadded part of the nylon first, covering a lot of area, taking off the easy stuff and revealing the harder spots. Those I have to work on with a more focused rubbing, and at times I got impatient and rubbed faster. I started to see the tougher spots streak as I rubbed, and realized that I was going fast enough to soften the wax through frictional heat. Nice...but I worried the streaks would be their own problem.

Not only are they not, but unless I'm suffering from pariedolia, the rapid rubbing actually seems to be restoring at least some surface gloss to the cards. My best guess is that it leaves at least a sheen behind, and if I have inflicted microscratches, the wax might be filling them in to some degree. I can't say for sure what's up, but I can say that the cards are looking much better than I could have hoped, and the rapid rubbing might deserve the credit.

Interested in any commentary or recommendations about taking wax off cards. If you know how to get it off the backs, I'll be ecstatic, but mostly I'm interested in if anyone else has seen this gloss restoration phenomenon.

[RW3FAN]

I always used cotton undies...... seriously.

[jkk503]

Originally Posted by RW3FAN

I always used cotton undies...... seriously.

And that takes it off the backs? Worth a try. More thieving from my wife's lingerie drawer (she'll be so thrilled).

[discodanman45]

Stains on the back of vintage cards won't come out. Well there are techniques, but you will need to talk to Kurt's Card Care and the card altering community.

Wax will sit on top of the cards gloss, but will soak in on the back.

[jkk503]

Originally Posted by discodanman45

Stains on the back of vintage cards won't come out. Well there are techniques, but you will need to talk to Kurt's Card Care and the card altering community.

Wax will sit on top of the cards gloss, but will soak in on the back.

That was kind of what I figured, but expendable cards abound on which to experiment, so I keep an open mind. I actually had some success taking at least some off the backs of 1970 Topps baseball, but nothing to jump for joy about.