UV Protection

At Vhett, we have done some extensive testing of our UV products. While many other displays simply claim their UV protection, we actually put ours up to the challenge.

When ink (including the ink printed onto trading cards) is exposed to the sun, the UV light causes chemical bonds in the ink to break down and thereby fade away. Specifically, red inks will usually fade before colors like blue and black.

In July 2022 we built the first prototype of what would become the Vhett Trophy Shield. This prototype was quite a bit less refined than our final product and only had 97.5% UV resistance, but it let us begin the UV test.

Since we wanted to see results quickly, we knew we wanted to pick a card with a lot of red ink. Luckily, we had 3 copies of Expedition's Cyndaquil. And with poor Cyndaquil's sacrifice, our experiment began.

One of our windows faces west, meaning it gets the full force of the plentiful California sun. We put the first Cyndaquil into a penny sleeve and taped it to the window.

We put the second Cyndaquil in another penny sleeve and placed it into our prototype. We put toploaders behind the card to make it as close to the surface as possible for maximum sun exposure, and put this prototype up against the window as well. The third Cyndaquil was put into a shoebox in a dark closet, never to see the sun.

A full year passed, and we finally entered into full production for the Trophy Shield. We took down our first two Cyndaquils from the window. It had been so long that the non-marking tape ended up...marking the window. The results are below.

To even more accurately measure these results, we scanned the cards in and measured their color levels. Cards are printed using CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). Magenta and yellow combine to output warmer colors like red and orange, which are most prone to sunfading.

 

We stacked the scans of the 3 cards on top of each other and selected a solid patch of color to sample from to keep things consistent. First up, the control sample

We can see here 91% M and 72 % Y value for a fresh card. Moving on to the card protected by anti-UV acrylic. Remember, our prototype model only had 97.5% UV protection, so our final production model is even more effective. 

 

The magenta and yellow values have dropped here slightly, with 89% M and 70% Y. Lastly, let's see what would've happened without any UV protection.

The card is visually much more faded and we can see a much bigger drop to 55% M and 48% Y.

That all being said, there is still some UV fading that happens even with anti-UV acrylic. This test was performed in harsh conditions, with direct window taped-to-the-glass exposure to sunlight for a whole year. If you are keeping your cards on a shelf in a room that occasionally gets some sun, it would likely take 10 years to receive a similar amount of UV exposure.

Unfortunately there is no 100% solution, but with our 99.5% UV filtering shields, your cards will not noticeably fade for decades. Vhett Trophy Shields help you display, protect, and most importantly enjoy your collection.