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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 1478163, member: 11668&quot;]Thanks for the link.&nbsp; Interesting stuff.</p><p><br /></p><p>They seem to be addressing different issues than we&#039;re discussing here, though.&nbsp; They mention that high humidity can cause paper to become moldy or brittle, and that fluctuating humidity can cause expansion and contraction that might damage a paper object over time.&nbsp; While they seem to be talking primarily about books, all of those points could apply to paper currency as well, and so proper storage is important (as you keep pointing out).</p><p><br /></p><p>They also make a couple of references to &quot;cockling paper&quot;, which isn&#039;t a term I&#039;d heard of before, but a Google search tells me it means &quot;ripples occurring in a piece of paper&quot;.&nbsp; The same Google search tells me that &quot;cockling&quot; is typically caused by water damage, and can be removed by pressing.</p><p><br /></p><p>In this context, I think you&#039;re missing a big difference between a book (which your link is mainly discussing) and a large-size currency note.&nbsp; The paper of the book was originally flat, and any un-flat-ness which it may subsequently have acquired is a form of degradation, which a careful conservator would seek to address before it got any worse.&nbsp; The large-size note, however, exhibited paper wave when it was new (due to being printed by the wet intaglio process), and while this wave *can* be removed by pressing, doing so is considered undesirable by collectors looking for originality.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, while mold stains (foxing) or brittleness are signs of environmental damage on either a book or a banknote, paper wave (cockling) is a sign of damage on a book but a sign of originality on a banknote.&nbsp; This is true because, again, the book was originally flat but the banknote was not.&nbsp; A note can suffer from water damage, but paper wave by itself isn&#039;t a sign of such damage.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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