# We do not seal anything shut Nothing we return to you is encapsulated, sealed, or permanently mounted. Not cels, not paper, not books, not anything else we examine. We are not in the business of commoditizing one-of-a-kind objects. We are in the business of preserving them through time. Never encapsulated. A sealed holder traps what the object gives off and holds it against the object. Everything we use is breathable. Nothing irreversible. No adhesives on the piece, no permanent mounting, no lamination, no treatment that cannot be undone. Dated, not permanent. A condition grade at the time of examination, with the date on the record. Objects change, and the record follows them. Graded flag by flag. One number cannot describe a one-of-a-kind object. The grade and the disclosures are published separately. ## What we never do We never encapsulate a piece in a sealed holder. We use no adhesives on the object, no permanent mounting, no lamination, and no treatment that cannot be reversed by a conservator later. Every piece comes back to you able to be removed from its housing, reframed, rehoused, examined again, or treated by someone else. Nothing we do forecloses a decision you or a future owner might want to make. ## What we use instead Everything a piece touches, in the lab and on the way home to you, is conservation-grade and breathable: acid-free and lignin-free board and tissue, inert sleeves left open so air can move, and buffered enclosures where the material calls for them. These are the classes of material used for museum and archive storage, chosen for the same reason museums choose them, which is that the object has to outlive the packaging. Archival housing is part of every authentication we do. It is not an upgrade, and the handling rules do not change with the value of the piece. For animation cels the materials are specified down to the polymer, the thickness and the open edge, with the sources: [Archival Housing of Animation Cels](https://www.rinkya.com/authentic/grading/housing). ## Why a sealed holder is the wrong idea Cellulose acetate, the base of nearly every production cel, breaks down by hydrolysis and releases acetic acid as it goes. The reaction is autocatalytic: the acid it releases accelerates the release of more acid. Conserving acetate therefore calls for cool, dry, ventilated storage, so that the acid can leave the object. A sealed holder does the opposite. It concentrates the acid the piece is producing and holds it against the paint. The same reasoning applies to paper and board, which need to exchange moisture with the air around them rather than be locked in with whatever they are giving off. Sealing an object also makes it unexaminable. Nobody can measure the acidity of a cel they cannot open, which means nobody can tell you whether the piece is stable or actively deteriorating. A holder that prevents the one measurement that matters is not preservation. ## A grade is a reading, not a property Under this standard a condition grade describes one object on one date, and the record says so in those words: condition grade at the time of examination, with the date it was examined. A grade assigned in 2026 is a fact about 2026. That is why every animation piece we grade also carries a measured acetate acidity reading: an A-D strip, a pH indicator that never touches the paint, sealed with the piece for 24 hours and read on the 0 to 3 conservation scale, with the method and the date printed on the record. Every re-measurement is kept, so the record shows the direction the object is moving rather than where it stood once. Re-examination on resale is expected. The history is part of the record, not a threat to it. ## The record is not the holder The verdict, the grade, the evidence photographs and the acidity history live in a permanent public record keyed to the seal number. They do not live in a piece of plastic. Take the piece out of its housing, frame it, lend it, have it conserved: nothing is voided, because the record was never inside the housing to begin with. That is the opposite of a sealed-holder grade, where opening the holder destroys the thing you paid for. ## What this means for you You can display it. You can have it professionally conserved. You can rehouse it. You can sell it, and the buyer can have it examined and graded again, with both readings on the same record. An object that survives is worth more than an object with a number on it. ## Where this comes from None of the science here is ours. A-D strips were developed by the Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology for film archives, and what is known about how acetate decays is the product of decades of work by conservation scientists and by museum and archive conservators. We invented none of it. What we are doing is applying it to a market that has never had it. Our own training is not accredited, because for Japanese animation art no accreditation exists. It is self-taught, and it was learned directly from animators and from people who worked inside the industry in Japan, across twenty-five years of buying and handling this material. We would rather say that plainly than imply a credential that does not exist in this field. [Get a piece authenticated →](https://www.rinkya.com/authentic/japancollectibles#apply) [Read an example record →](https://www.rinkya.com/authentic/record/RKJ15778) [← All grading standards](https://www.rinkya.com/authentic/grading) This page states the conservation and housing posture that applies to every category Rinkya Authentic examines. Questions about a specific record or piece: [authentic@rinkya.com](mailto:authentic@rinkya.com). Cite as: Rinkya Authentic, "We do not seal anything shut", 2026, https://www.rinkya.com/authentic/grading/conservation Free to quote and share with attribution to Rinkya Authentic and a link to this page. Not for commercial republication or derivative standards ([CC BY-NC-ND 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)). [This page as Markdown](https://www.rinkya.com/authentic/grading/conservation.md).