Carte de visite archival storage

[Marcel Safier]

In general I cannot personally justify the cost of mylar to store all of my collection of over 20000 cdvs and reserve it for choice and expensive items.Polypropylene has proven a cost effective option.

I have pages custom made here in Australia from archival polypropylene that hold 8 cdvs in landscape format. These fit into an over-sized A4 binder. There is a similar product available in the UK originally sold by Stanley Gibbons in their Polyprotec range but now also available from Vera Trinder http://veratrinder.org as their Multi Master 8 pocket page with 71mm x 107mm pockets. Vera Trinder also make a cigarette/trade card 4 pocket page with 88mm x 111mm pockets but as these are intended for a non-archival PVC binder I can't recommend them. Secol in the UK http://www.secol.co.uk make a page that fits 8 cdvs in landscape orientation (product code AS106P8) with 76mm x 113mm pockets but they are somewhat more expensive than the Vera Trinder page and require one of Secol's over-sized binders to fit them in.

I have not seen any other cdv suitable pages available anywhere else in the world which is amazing since potentially so many people could use them.

I use a PAT tested polypropylene slip cased 3 ring binders to house the cdv pages and these are available commercially in Australia from Zetta Florence http://zettaflorence.com.au and Albox http://www.albox.com.au. I have never seen these sort of albums available overseas.

I also use polypropylene cdv and cabinet photo sleeves open on one short side supplied by Bags Unlimited in the USA http://www.bagsunlimited.com. Some cdvs are a little too long for them and for those I use UltraPro http://www.ultrapro.com Tall Soft Sleeves, that I cut down in length. They are made for tall trade cards. I store these in Gaylord http://www.gaylord.com acid free cardboard carte de visite boxes http://www.gaylord.com/adblock.asp?abid=2407 but they are also available from Bags Unlimited. Even without sleeves, these boxes are still a convenient storage solution being 4 3/4"W x 6"L x 3"H and they hold around 80 -100 cdvs.

I would be interested in learning about other people's storage solutions.

Cheers! Marcel -- Marcel Safier PO Box 239 Holland Park QLD 4121 Australia