
And now for something completely different.
I buy and sell (and frame) a lot of old ads. For whatever it's worth in your considerations, the value of the ad is between $2 and $8. Zillions of these are available and have no real value except for framablity. No one collects them, and Life ads are very common place. You can buy complete issues issues of Life from that year for about $4-8 dollars. I have stacks of them in our store (Antiques and Framing) and they move very slowly.
Fifty years from now, they could replace the same ad for next to nothing. I have had the encapsulation/dry mounting discussion with a number of my customers and so far none have said that they care for it's preservation. It's a decorative that eventually will be tossed. They would rather see it drymounted than having to view it through mylar.
I know this isn't a popular view among framers and if it had any value I would agree, but I have yet to have a customer agree. Their typical reply is "conservation for a cheap ad??? This isn't some valuable piece of Ephemera."
I go to a number of ephemera shows where I buy magazines, ads and other epherma for framing and sales. Life ads are among the cheapest available. Now if we were talking about some of the great full color ads with wonderful art from magazines like 1920s Good Housekeeping, that's a different story. The most valuable of ads are the ones with great art, especially some of the deco art of the 20s. Maybe future generations will find some appeal to the mostly bland Cleaver Family art of the 50s, but the current generation is mostly rejecting 50's ad. There are some exceptions such as Coke ads, but even there the older ads have better art.
I believe in educating my customers where conservation is important and do so dilgently, but there is a line. Some ephemera can't justify it. Please don't flame me too badly for this.