Tenyo Magic Forum

I have a few tricks where the cards have turned yellow by time.
Someone knows a way to turn white them?
I saw that some used talc or bircarbonate of soda but I would like to avoid removing all the colors

Your opinion ?

If you are talking about cardboard cards that came with various tricks, I am affraid there is nothing practical you can do.

If you are talking about playing card stock, I am affraid there is nothing practical you can do for that either.

Sometimes, trying to fix things only makes them worse or destroys them altogether. It may be best to leave well enough alone.

Like pages of books, age is not kind to paper or most other things for that matter.

What you can do is to build the yellowing into your patter as ancient relics or some other historical sort of thing.

Age hasn't been all that kind to me either come to think of it!

Indeed Steve.
From a chemical point of view you can't do anything without damaging the cards as far as It know.

Hi Herve,

Thanks so much for raising this issue. I have the same problem as you do unfortunately

I got this nice cards created by Hiroshi Kondo - Shot In The Dark about more than 10 years ago and most of them are becoming yellow unfortunately. At the first time I got, they were all white. The front side is becoming almost 100% yellow now but not on the back. We still can see white colors at some of the areas. I think we can do nothing about this but since they are plastic cards, I assume heat is 1 of the factor of the color transposition. Plastic is very sensitive material that can react with the heat, that why we have also same issue with our Tenyo props. So it is important to protect them from sunlight and heat.

About the normal playing cards made from paper, I think it takes longer to change color. But still they need extra protection . I stored all my gaff cards in the card collector plastic sheets. We can store 9 different of cards in 1 sheet which has 9 compartment, 1 card to each compartment. The size fits to the poker size playing cards. I think the size should be similar to baseball cards or other collection cards. All sheets come into a folder for better storage management.

We could have also packet tricks and most of the packet trick come with more than 1 cards. It is still possible to store them into the plastic sheets but I made a small envelopes to store packet tricks and label them for identification and easy search. All envelopes come into a box.

I`m still not sure if this is the correct method to store cards. But this is the best I can do at the moment. Humidity is one of serious issue here and effected also to some of my books (or cards). Once we had also the discussion here : viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1943&hilit=book

Maybe we need to think now in reverse. How to change all cards in yellow so they will look the same /vintage.

Thanks to all your replies.

I suspected a little that there were no solutions and I was right not to test the solutions based on baking soda or talc You confirmed!

I looked a little more and the yellowing is due to the lignin: for instance, http://science.howstuffworks.com/question463.htm

Except a very good quality of the papar, the paper turns yellow.
To protect it, it must be protected from light and oxygen and humidity.

There is no miracle recipe

Steve S. wrote:...If you are talking about playing card stock, I am affraid there is nothing practical you can do for that either.

Yes, i'm talking about playing cars, I apologize for vocabulary problems and phrases not always relevant

Steve S. wrote:Age hasn't been all that kind to me either come to think of it!

Ok, I'll consider it's like my wrinkles, impossiboe to remove

VictorS wrote: Maybe we need to think now in reverse. How to change all cards in yellow so they will look the same /vintage.

Hi Victor, maybe it''s the good way to think

My Shot in the dark trick also has some yellowish cards. They white ones slowsly start to become yellow too.

Need to speed them up turning yellow as Victor sais - good advice!

David DeTenyo wrote:My Shot in the dark trick also has some yellowish cards. They white ones slowsly start to become yellow too.

Need to speed them up turning yellow as Victor sais - good advice!

Sorry to hear that David. At least I know that I am not the one who have this problem. Any idea how do we speed up the "vintaging" process ? Just lay them under sunlight, wait and see until they have similar tone of color ?

Yep - (UV) light is the key to make white stuff yellow
Wanna go super fast? Lay them in/on a solarium for a minute or 10 and see what happens ... the cards will get a nice suntan