Order of the Sacred Treasure

[Dieter3]

I believe I am correct in stating that this is a document for the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Rays - what would be the 5th class equivalent if the 7th and 8th classes still existed. I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong, somebody!

Anyway, this one is in really nice condition with only a few tiny wrinkles, probably from being unrolled a few times. But no damage, seems awfully yellow, but maybe that's how modern documents are? It's at least uniform. This is really current, from 2008. The case tube is in mint condition, now I just need to keep it that way! Sorry, I don't obscure names, hope that doesn't offend anyone....

[Dieter3]

[Dieter3]

[Paul L Murphy]

Absolutely beautiful. You are correct that it is a 5th class award.

How did you manage to photograph it so well ? I can never get documents to come out this clear.

:cheers:

[Dieter3]

And that's the crappy, grainy, low-res version for this site!!

The lighting at my house is really, really bad. Natural light is pitiful for me - I actually have to use 4 pole/torch lamps to get as much light as I can at the right time of day. The picture of the document was taken in the that light plus flash. The second pic. was just the lamps, no flash, macro. The background is white, don't know if that makes a difference at all, but it seems to brighten things up reflecting light and such.

[Paul L Murphy]

What do you use to keep them flat ? The problem I have is that most of my certs are rolled so it is nearly impossible to get them to behave for the camera !

[Dieter3]

Well, if I need to photograph something right away, I use diving weights - 2lb weights, shot inside nylon pillows,(and the pillows in plastic bags!) one at each corner. These do not mar the paper surface whatsoever. (It kills me when I see sellers using things like batteries and wrenches, and assorted hardware to do this.....) Granted, you have to crop those out if you don't want their ugliness in the picture, but that's easy enough! Another option is to use sewing weights - usually plastic capsules over lead or something heavy with a felt bottom that is safe to rest on delicate surfaces.

But the preferred way is a lot more time consuming - the documents are first re-humidified which coaxes them into unrolling and becoming a bit more flattened, then the documents are placed between sheets of glassine and pressed under heavy weight for several weeks. This does a help a wee bit with wrinkling too, can't remove them, but it levels them out a fair amount. But once this is done, the documents are very easy to handle and much more cooperative, especially for photographing the entire document without any other intrusive objects.

Yes, highly impractical to do this - but far easier to conserve when flat, and conservation is my primary goal - these all end up in polyester sleeves with an acid-absorbent, thick paper behind them and a sheet of glassine over the top - this prevents the mobile ink from some of the stamps (like on documents for orders) from migrating from the document to the polyester because of electrostatic charge. (Some inks seem stable, but the big imperial stamps in the middle of these docs. are not so I take to not disturb them as best I can.) Then these flattened, sleeved documents end up in archival storage boxes. The cases or tubes are all identified and stored separately if the document came with one.

[JapanX]

Here is companion for your beautiful document and order Dieter. 4 class for professor Nakamoto. I think he was awarded about a year ago.

Order.

[JapanX]

Document

[Dieter3]

GORGEOUS!!!!! :beer: