aahz
12-08-2012, 04:47 AM
I've already determined that cat urine is flammable if an electric current is run through it. Unfortunately, I now have a situation involving both cat urine AND a portion of my Magic collection. :frown:
A few of my binders on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in my study got sprayed by one of my cats, who has recently taken up the hobby of marking to antagonize one of his peers. It must have happened sometime in the last week, and we didn't smell it because he had also recently sprayed another area nearby. I only noticed this evening as I was going through binders to pull out a few cards for a friend's recently built cube. At first I was utterly horrified, though closer inspection revealed that I got really lucky. About 4-5 binders total were exposed, three on the second shelf and two on the bottom. The upper binders were only hit on the outside and there was no damage to any cards in them (phew! One of them had cards from Arabian Nights through Legends).
However, the urine got on the tops of the two binders on the bottom and some cards were hit. One contained Invasion block, which looked to mostly be hit on the outside of the binder, though there seems to be some minimal splash damage that is limited to the top row of cards on just a few pages. My binder of pre-Mirrodin Foils took the brunt of the assault. None of the cards were in sleeves and every page was exposed. I just got finished pulling out all the cards to survey the carnage. Everything in the bottom rows was okay, and most of the stuff in the middle rows survived. The top rows suffered heavy casualties.
Fortunately, the bulk of the cards were chaff, so the losses aren't too excessive. The most expensive card was a Foil Palinchron, which somehow came out unscathed as far as I can tell, as did a handful of cheap but sentimental cards (Raven Familiar, Bouncing Beebles, etc.). The affected foil cards include Undermine (which is the worst hit overall), Holistic Wisdom, Ghastly Demise, Wing Shards, Seal of Cleansing, Arrogant Wurm, Snap, Riftstone Portal, Korlash of Blackblade, a few basic lands, and some other EDH playables. In general, nothing too expensive or rare was damaged since most of the worthwhile foils I own were not in the binder (good thing I maintain a foiled out EDH deck for my wife to house/protect the good stuff and I'm too lazy to have found time to transfer the more recent foils into the binder).
Before anyone says anything about having the cards on the bottom shelves, it's worth noting that they have been there with the same set of felines in the house for YEARS without incident. Also, pretty much all the Legacy/Vintage playables (i.e. anything rare/expensive) are housed elsewhere under much safer conditions. Since I'm not a fan of foil cards, I was very relieved that it was the only binder to take a critical hit. But it still sucks to see something like this happen to any Magic cards (that aren't both complete crap AND ugly).
Just wanted to share my suffering and ask if anyone has suggestions for trying to save the handful of affected cards I might actually want to play with at some point. I'm trying to decide if it's worth my time to bother or if I should just write off the losses. :rolleyes:
A few of my binders on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in my study got sprayed by one of my cats, who has recently taken up the hobby of marking to antagonize one of his peers. It must have happened sometime in the last week, and we didn't smell it because he had also recently sprayed another area nearby. I only noticed this evening as I was going through binders to pull out a few cards for a friend's recently built cube. At first I was utterly horrified, though closer inspection revealed that I got really lucky. About 4-5 binders total were exposed, three on the second shelf and two on the bottom. The upper binders were only hit on the outside and there was no damage to any cards in them (phew! One of them had cards from Arabian Nights through Legends).
However, the urine got on the tops of the two binders on the bottom and some cards were hit. One contained Invasion block, which looked to mostly be hit on the outside of the binder, though there seems to be some minimal splash damage that is limited to the top row of cards on just a few pages. My binder of pre-Mirrodin Foils took the brunt of the assault. None of the cards were in sleeves and every page was exposed. I just got finished pulling out all the cards to survey the carnage. Everything in the bottom rows was okay, and most of the stuff in the middle rows survived. The top rows suffered heavy casualties.
Fortunately, the bulk of the cards were chaff, so the losses aren't too excessive. The most expensive card was a Foil Palinchron, which somehow came out unscathed as far as I can tell, as did a handful of cheap but sentimental cards (Raven Familiar, Bouncing Beebles, etc.). The affected foil cards include Undermine (which is the worst hit overall), Holistic Wisdom, Ghastly Demise, Wing Shards, Seal of Cleansing, Arrogant Wurm, Snap, Riftstone Portal, Korlash of Blackblade, a few basic lands, and some other EDH playables. In general, nothing too expensive or rare was damaged since most of the worthwhile foils I own were not in the binder (good thing I maintain a foiled out EDH deck for my wife to house/protect the good stuff and I'm too lazy to have found time to transfer the more recent foils into the binder).
Before anyone says anything about having the cards on the bottom shelves, it's worth noting that they have been there with the same set of felines in the house for YEARS without incident. Also, pretty much all the Legacy/Vintage playables (i.e. anything rare/expensive) are housed elsewhere under much safer conditions. Since I'm not a fan of foil cards, I was very relieved that it was the only binder to take a critical hit. But it still sucks to see something like this happen to any Magic cards (that aren't both complete crap AND ugly).
Just wanted to share my suffering and ask if anyone has suggestions for trying to save the handful of affected cards I might actually want to play with at some point. I'm trying to decide if it's worth my time to bother or if I should just write off the losses. :rolleyes: