Storing unsold and undocumented stock
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Every collector and every dealer has it: material that came in and never got processed.
The worst-stored material you own
Backlog lives in the original dealer flat, in newspaper, in a garage or a storage unit, with no humidity control and often no labels.
Which is to say it is stored in exactly the conditions the failure section warns about, and it is the material with the least documentation to lose.
A garage is the single worst place: daily temperature swings, seasonal humidity swings, and both drive pyrite decay, efflorescence and salt damage.
Sort on arrival
The habit that prevents the backlog: nothing goes into storage in the packaging it arrived in.
Unwrap, check for damage, transfer the label into an inert box, write a number, make a catalog row.
It takes a few minutes per specimen and it is the only point at which the data is guaranteed to still be attached.
Three piles
Keep and catalog, which goes through the full process immediately.
Sell, which still needs a label and a number, because stock without data sells as material.
Bulk, which is genuinely undifferentiated and can live as a lot with one entry and a count.
The mistake is a fourth pile called "decide later", which is the backlog under another name.
The backlog rule
If it has been unprocessed for a year it will not be processed by intention, so process it by schedule: one flat a week, in order.
Start with the sulfides, because they are the ones actively deteriorating.
And stop buying flats until the backlog is smaller, which is the advice nobody in this hobby takes and the only one that works.
What unprocessed stock can live in
