Serious question, has anyone else gotten burned by that old map repair tip from a random collector?

I was at a flea market last spring, and this older guy (claimed he collected maps for 40 years) told me to use cheap hairspray to set ink on old maps before laminating them. He swore it was a trick from his grandpa. I tried it on a 1920s road map of Texas I bought for 15 bucks. Not only did the hairspray make the ink blur instantly, but it also yellowed the paper in a weird speckled pattern. The map is basically ruined now, and I'm out my money and a cool piece of history. Has anyone else fallen for a bad restoration trick like this from someone at a show?

2 comments

2 Comments

karenm4923d ago

Hairspray, laminating, and a grandpa's tip? That sounds like a recipe for turning history into a crunchy, yellowed science experiment. I bet that guy's next trick is telling people to clean old photos with Windex. At least you only spent 15 bucks, I heard someone tried that on a 1910s map worth a fortune and it turned into a sticky mess. Now your Texas road map looks like it has a bad case of the measles from 1920.

mason_ward23d ago

@karenm49 you are so right about the Windex thing, it's terrifying what people will try on old stuff. I had a similar disaster with a vintage railway map from the 1940s my grandpa gave me. I tried using this so called "archival safe" adhesive spray (you know, the kind that promises the world) and it turned the whole thing into a sticky, gooey nightmare. The paper literally started to wrinkle and buckle in places, and the ink started bleeding like a bad watercolor painting. It's a total loss basically, a lesson learned the hard way for fifteen bucks like you said. Now I just keep my old maps in sleeves and never touch them with anything, not even a dry cloth.