The annual condition check
Updated
The single habit that decides whether a collection is worth anything in thirty years.
An hour a year
Drawer by drawer, once a year, looking rather than tidying.
Everything on the what-goes-wrong list is slow. That is the good news: a yearly look catches all of it early, and nothing on that list improves on its own.
What to look for
Sulfides. Any white or yellow bloom, any smell of sulfur, any crack that was not there. Pyrite, marcasite and pyrrhotite first, every year, without exception.
Carbonates. White efflorescence, which is telling you the storage is producing acid.
Hydrates. Clouding, chalkiness, fine cracking. Laumontite is the early warning for the whole group.
Fugitive colors. Compare against a control kept in the dark.
Labels. Yellowing, embrittlement, separation from their specimens, and anything illegible.
Boxes. Cloudy or sticky plastic, crumbling foam, anything that smells when opened.
Pests. Grazed label edges, small holes, frass in corners.
The environment
Read the hygrometer, and read it at more than one time of year.
Around 45 to 50% suits most material, and stability matters more than the exact number.
Check nothing has changed around the collection: a new radiator, a window without a blind, a cabinet moved against an outside wall.
What to do with a finding
Isolate first. A decaying sulfide is a source of acid for everything in the drawer. Out, into its own sealed box, today.
Photograph the label of anything at risk, now, because that is the part that becomes unrecoverable.
Record the finding in the catalog with the date, so next year's check can see a trend rather than a snapshot.
And fix the cause rather than the symptom. Efflorescence returning after cleaning means the storage is still producing acid, and cleaning it again changes nothing.