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Originally Posted by Exhibitman
The article is very poorly researched and nothing new.
Mylar is the accepted standard storage material for paper artifacts at museums and the Library of Congress. It is considered inert and suitable for storage over hundreds of years. I don't think I will have my cards for more than 50 more years...so probably not a big deal.
Polypropylene is nearly inert. It isn't museum standard but it will last without changes for a very long time. The sheets are more likely to get scratched with handling than become unstable. I believe the card condoms in BVG holders are polypro.
I think I heard that the slabs at PSA and SGC are polystyrene, which is extremely resistant to acids as might be leached from cardboard.
I believe the threat to cards has been overstated. I have been collecting for 40 years. I have had cards stored in old vinyl pages and sleeves that have turned piss yellow and brittle as they have broken down. Not a single card has exhibited any staining indicative of any chemical migration.
For my good photos and paper items I use 4 mil Mylar pages from BCEmylar.com. They have two versions that come three-hole punched so you can easily store them in notebooks. For cheapo items I use Ultra Pro sheets, sometimes with an inner sleeve as well. For odd sized items, if they are smaller than 8 x 10 I usually use a smaller Mylar holder from BCE and put it into an Ultra Pro 8 x 10 sheet. That seems to be both secure and nice to look at. I like to flip through my albums regularly. I treat my postcards like photos.
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There are a lot of good points made here.
What most people have a hard time with is the differing concerns, attitudes and budget of museums and private collectors.
Major museums usually have at least passable budgets, and are in things for the very long haul. For them, Mylar is almost the only current choice since they look at minimizing damage at any level. Some chemical damage can accelerate over time. Since Museums want to work on a time scale that most of us would consider to be "forever" a holder that's good for hundreds of years is entirely appropriate. (There are things that don't do as well in Mylar, but I'll stick to paper things. Library of Congress has lots of information on archival storage and conservation)
Smaller museums may not do as well, and the least well funded probably do a worse job of it than many serious collectors.
Most collectors limit their decisions to how long they believe they'll own the card, and are influenced to varying degrees by budget.
That's mostly ok, if a bit shortsighted. Assuming someone might own stuff for 50 years, most holders will be ok. The old PVC pages aren't. While they don't always cause damage and staining, they can. Screwdowns also can have issues, although I think they're better than the PVC pages.
I've used PVC pages and almost everything that has come along. Some of my earlier pages haven't even yellowed, but did get brittle. Some yellowed without getting brittle yet even though I expect they would have. But I've bought cards in albums that were stuck inside the pages, as well as what I'm sure many of us have experienced - the pages all being stuck to each other making removing the cards without damage a lengthy process.
Most of the currently available supplies are actually pretty good. Cardsavers, toploaders, penny sleeves- all of them are better than nothing.
Slabs may be polystyrene, but I think polycarbonate is more likely. Both are fairly stable,(Comparing them to Mylar, the difference between but Polycarbonate blocks UV a bit although uv can degrade it over time.
Penny sleeves will become brittle and start disintegrating into small brittle flakes after 3-5 years of direct exposure to sunlight. No damage to the card inside surprisingly.
Doing really correct archival storage is fairly expensive, so nearly everyone opts for the almost as good but less expensive solutions. I can't do the environmental controls - 40-45% relative humidity and 64F +/- 2F the cost of doing that in a house from the 1880's would be insane. And since many of the cards I have are modernish, a mylar sleeve for each one is also out of the question.
But the better stuff gets what I can afford that's fairly close to archival.
The other concern for collectors is display, handling, and eventual sale. I have some cards slabbed. I won't be around forever, and either my wife or the kids will probably have an easier time selling and get a bit more if some of the card are slabbed. Plus I can let the kids hold the slab to look at the cards, something I wouldn't do without a very stiff holder.
Sure, I have long term concerns about some sorts of cardboard in a slab, especially acidic stuff like strip cards or most cards from the 40's till about 1992. (And beyond, some of the Plastic card made by Collectors Edge have yellowed. ) Most T cards are probably just fine.
As far as time goes, I see enough cards with the diagonally striped paper loss from being stored in a "magnetic" photo album. Those were not horrible for short term storage of modern photos, but any sort of long term storage and whatever is in them gets badly stuck. I wish the people using them had thought beyond the "why buy the right pages when this entire album is only $3?" or even not being concerned because they wouldn't be the ones trying to remove the stuff 25 years later.
Steve B