HELP! Drymounting ruined concert tickets!

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RadPix

Grumbler in Training
Joined
Jul 18, 2002
Posts
14
Loc
W.Bridgewater , Massachusetts
Fellow framers, I am in a jam. Can anyone help with this problem?

After cutting a 14 opening mat to showcase a customers collection of Tom Petty concert tickets from the last 15 years, I put them in the mounting press set at 180 degrees. Most of the tickets got a little greyish, but four of them turned black as coal! :eek:

I then remembered hearing about a security feature used on concert tickets that turned them black if exposed to the sun, or UV light, and apparently heat as well. Not a good thing. :(

Has anyone encountered this problem before, and more importantly, discovered a way to counteract this effect?

Dabbing the blackend surface with UnSeal had no affect. The only thing I can think of is scanning them into a computer, jacking up the contrast, and recolor them. But I am not a computer restoration expert, and do not know if this is even possible.

Anyone, can you help me with some advice? :confused:

Thanx, RadPix
 
You know, some of those tickets turn black if you leave them on the dashboard of the car, or in your back pocket as you roast your buns by a camp fire, or if you iron your best pants with the tickets still in the pocket, or you put your purse with the tickets inside down on a hot bench in the sun on a hot day, so you are not alone in finding out that heat damages the tickets. Many, many, many people have blackened those tickets in many, many, many ways. . . . .

If the black tickets are recent, and you can make out the company that issues them (IE ticket masters), try calling them. Sometimes they will replace recent tickets.

Or, try going to www.tompetty.com, e-mail them, and perhaps someone can replace the tickets, or can help you get replacements.

Best of luck, and let us know what you end up doing.
 
Don't laugh if I say, "I feel your pain." Rebecca's link is good and so is the advice. If you can't replace the tix---as I could one of them after drymounting---you can always just grovel. And you can't replace airline ticket stubs as easily as concert or museum stubs. :(
 
Thanks for the link. It helped, I think...

-I'M DOOMED!!! :eek:

The tickets were from the early 90's , so calling for duplicates is not an option.
I assume this person did not go to all these shows alone. Maybe a friend or relative has their old stub. Sounds like the customer may have their old stubbs already, along with TP's unmentionables... Maybe a close substitution?

One of my co-workers does photoshop at home. We could come up with something "ticket-like" I'm sure. But I doubt it would look like a dog-eared, slightly fuzzy, funky smelling original TP concert ticket. :rolleyes:

How long would it take to photoshop a faux-ticket? Or four??
 
I was thinking the exact same thing, MM, but you had the guts to write it.

Try ebay for things like that. Sellers may have things that aren't on ebay.
 
I have, in fact, made Kiss concert tickets in Photoshop. The customer left the originals on the dash of his car and they turned black in about 30 minutes. We took some similar tickets, changed a few details like the date, the seats and - oh yeah - the venue, and he was happy as a clam.

Now, about those $100 bills . . .

And why are we dry mounting concert tickets?
 
^^Ron, what kind of printer and inks did you use on the KISS tix?
Would it be worth the effort for a relatively low priced sale? -Not that I'm eager to grovel...-that's my boss' job. ;)

--Mounting the tix wouldn't have been my first choice, but then I didn't write up the order. And I was ignorant of the consequences. My bad. :(
 
I used the Epson 2000P printer, Epson's Archival Matte paper and their pigmented inks.

The tickets should outlast the snapshots included in the same shadowbox.

The whole thing was possible because he had similar tickets to scan and modify. It took me about 30 minutes and cost the customer about $30 (not including framing. ;) )
 
Rad - I did the same thing to a stub for front row center to the opening night of The Lion King! Talk about heart failure!

Have you broken the news to the client yet? :eek: If you try to make your facsimile on your computer first, it may help the client get over the shock. All the best to you.
 
This happened to me during the Reagan admnistration with a pair of Frank Sinatra tickets that were to go into an elaborate multi opening design with a newspaper review of the concert and signed program. A call to Ticketmaster got me absolutely nowhere. I cried, then I became ill, and after a night without sleep called the client and blurted out the truth. He said, "Oh, I bought four tickets, but only used 2. I'll bring the others in tomorrow."

Talk to the client before killing yourself creating replacements.
 
Thankyou all for your advice and comments. I don't feel so alone now. Still S.O.L., but in good company.
We'll see if I have to totally destroy the multi-opening mat to access the deceased tickets. Live and learn... :rolleyes:
 
had sdame thing happen with SIGNED Tim McGraw ticket. We paid the customer a stipend and she's still a good customer.

Nowyou knwo why our drymnount press is almost never on. Unless someone wants a $30 replaceable poster mounted. It makes a dandy worksurface, though.
 
And the moral of the story is, not only to framers have to know about acidity, chemical reactions, the physics of light, humidity and vapors, we need to know about heat sensitivity.

(And people think this job is easy. hmph! 25 years and I'm still learning.)

The problem is, many things can only be learned by experience. It doesn't help to know that heat will destroy a thermofax if you have never seen one, and don't know how to recognize it. I'll wager the majority of us have learned what a thermofax is by killing one.

Tickets are really difficult. Around here, I reccommend the customer to make a color photocopy to frame, because of the possiblity of the originals turning black in the heat of car on the way home.

Good luck Radpix, let us know how this works out.
 
Originally posted by HannaFate:
I'll wager the majority of us have learned what a thermofax is by killing one.

Tickets are really difficult. Around here, I reccommend the customer to make a color photocopy to frame, because of the possiblity of the originals turning black in the heat of car on the way home.

Click to expand...
Hannafate... oh so true. I am guilty of attempted murder of a ticket... caught it just after I damaged the edge with the heat iron... and the tickets were a friend's for her husband as a surprise... I felt really bad.

I think to recommend a copy is smart for this.

Good luck Radpix... I hope you find copies at least closely resembling the ruined tix.

Roz
 
I think it's a good idea to make copies and frame the copies for anything like that. This won't help you, but it might make you feel better. Once I accidently touched an original water color with a felt tip pen. It just happened to be from a famous artist from Hawaii who had died and it was the last picture he ever painted. I lost 10 years of sleep over that one. I groveled heavenward big time, shed a lot of tears, then told the customer the truth up front. I paid an art restoration place $50 to air brush the spot. The customer was so wonderful and she still comes back at least once or twice a year to this day. Oh, and I didn't charge her a dime for the framing job. It was such a relief that it could be fixed enough so the mark didn't show I didn't care that it cost me $500 in income. The lesson there was--what doen't kill you, makes you stronger. And believe me, you will never do it again! There probably isn't a framer in the industry who hasn't done something really stupid like that. Ron's idea is probably the best solution. Try to make dupes so you have them to show when the customer comes in. Good luck.
 
^^Too true. I'd be wary of exposing a thermofax to any light/heat source for ANY ammount of time. Those copiers are BRIGHT and quite warm.

I've been burned once already! :mad:
 
Rad, why were you permanently affixing the tickets? You could have used mylar corners. That way the tickets could be removed in the future.

PMA (Positionable Mounting Adhesive) works well as a cold mounting method when appropriate.
 
Jana,

It seems that RadPix simply made a mistake (as many of us have at one time or another) and is learning a valuable, if not an embarrassing, lesson by asking how to mount these thermal tickets after the fact.

There have been some very good suggestions about the proper way to handle heat sensitive materials on this thread and I am sure that RadPix is a wiser framer as a result of this episode.

Framerguy
 
This is an excellent reason to belong to PPFA because of the education classes.
The classes taught by Vivian Kistler & Pat Parker have covered the thermal ticket until Blue in the face. (well not really blue) It is probably one of the most common mounting mistakes with most beginner framers.
 
Originally posted by GUMBY:
This is an excellent reason to belong to PPFA because of the education classes.
The classes taught by Vivian Kistler & Pat Parker have covered the thermal ticket until Blue in the face. (well not really blue) It is probably one of the most common mounting mistakes with most beginner framers.
Click to expand...
It's also a good reason to subscribe to Decor and Picture Framing Magazine! Over the years, I've gotten quite an education from reading them, it even helped me when I took the CPF exam.
For future reference, I'd NEVER mount anything that can't be easily replaced. The framer who taught me told me that you should treat a $2 piece with the same respect that you would a $2,000 piece. I agree with this, and if you follow this advice, you'll surely shed a lot less tears in the future. Meanwhile, keep a stiff upper lip, and come clean with your client, if nothing else, they'll appreciate your honesty.

[ 10-10-2003, 08:57 PM: Message edited by: Bogframe ]
 
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