Apparently Lindner Albums Use A Type Of PVC. Is It Actually Safe?

Lindner make beautiful albums but the plastics they use are not safe.

I speak from unfortunate experience. I have a MNH British Empire collection and have selected every stamp with quality in mind. Each stamp was post office fresh (I don't accept toning) and the correct shade when purchased. I also collect all shade varieties so I am particularly conscious of colour.

The stamps have been in Lindner albums for around fifteen years.

I'd say 98% of them are as good as the day they were placed in the albums. But I have numerous examples where the plastic has reacted with the ink and completey changed the colour (and the value) of the stamp. Some of these stamps were not inexpensive purchases, so it is particularly annoying.

To be precise, all the affected stamps were printed between the 1920's and 1940's. Earlier and later issues seem to be stable. It only affects inks in the red/brown-red/orange and yellow colour spectrum.

I would completely dismiss any assurances from the manufacturer of these albums. The only certain way to guarantee stability between plastics and inks is real world, long-term storage tests using a variety of different stamps that were printed using a variety of different inks.

Unfortunately I have unwittingly run this long term test myself and it is blatently evident that Lindner plastics are not stable with every ink.

Caveat emptor.

From the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum:




https://presidentlincoln.illinois.g...ate%20paper.

Better bin those 45s now.

I presume we're talking about the albums with the cover sheet over the card base - I wonder if Safe's are made from the same material?

Image from a 30+ year old Lindner album page for storing booklets and panes: The (enlarged shown) pane was stored in one of the pockets.

(In case you are wondering: The albums are brown and the brown discoloration is masked by the brown album so I didn't see it until it was too late). Cost me over $1000 in panic mode to replace all the albums and pages with polypropylene pages

Over many years, like many of us, I've purchased other people's stamp albums and stamp storage binders to get the stamps I want. Most of these have been standard paper stamp albums where aging consists of gradually yellowing paper, presumably acidic paper, that yellows and degrades over the years as it gradually falls apart. We all know this, and none of us would reuse such pages. Yet many of us assume that both modern paper album pages and modern plastic pages must be safe or why would anyone sell them today if they weren't? Well, because they make money, that's why.

And I'm fairly sure that even the latest and the greatest paper album pages from the leading album manufacturers will only last just so long. I have some 50 year old paper stamp albums that are still in good shape, but of the 100-year old and older albums, none are in particularly good shape and some are browned and disintegrating badly. So that's your "modern paper lifespan" right there.

We don't know for sure what will happen to plastic album pages over the next 50 or 100 years, but I'm betting that they disintegrate, too. When a paper album page ages, it turns yellow and brownish which can in turn acidify the stamps mounted on it so that they turn brownish, as well. What will plastic pages do? More than likely the petroleum products used in their manufacture will gradually liquefy, making them feel more oily than when new. You can feel this oiliness on cheaply-made plastic pages after only a few years. That oil is more than likely going to ruin many stamps it comes into contact with, staining them and perhaps changing their color.

This may apply only to certain types of plastic but not other types -- or so they claim. I'm not quite convinced though that poly-this or poly-that is better than the other options, and since I know some plastic pages are very bad for stamps and covers -- and I've seen this with my own eyes -- I prefer to play it safe and avoid most plastic pages. I also do not like the weight of most plastic-page albums. They are just very heavy and I find that unpleasant.

With stamps mounted on paper pages in such albums, we are often advised to "air them out" periodically, something we do naturally when we look at our stamps and turn the pages. Presumably this lets the pages and stamps take a breath of fresh air, so to speak, although I'm not sure what actual benefit that has. With albums we haven't looked at in a long time, it might be a good idea to browse through them once in awhile. Old albums stored away for years without ever being looked at often contain disintegrated pages from aging which ruins stamps. Would they have fared better if they had been looked at? I haven't the slightest idea, but some claim so. Will "airing out" plastic-page albums make any difference to the life of stamps in them? I can't see how since the danger there is more than likely the oils in the pages themselves.

I decided not to use plastic page albums, but I do use plastic stamp mounts which might seem contradictory. But I've never seen a failed stamp mount other than the now ancient Crystal Mounts which fared very poorly over 50 years ago. Old stocks of Crystal Mounts can still be found on ebay, amazingly, presumably sold to unsuspecting collectors. Some other brands of older stamp mounts I've seen have shrunk badly, ruining the stamps they hold. Some required the stamps to be literally sealed inside them which makes for a very difficult removal of stamps years later, often damaging the stamp. Stamp hinges with their "hinge remnant" problem never had that problem. And I've seen quite a few yellowed glassine envelopes and stocks books with glassine strips that have yellowed and aged badly, so glassine is not as safe as we once thought, either. I'm guessing everything used for collecting stamps probably degrades over time.

Bu I use Vario (clear non-oily plastic) pages for some volumes of First Day Covers I have. That I don't value FDC's particularly highly will be my excuse for that, but I've also never seen a degraded Vario plastic page -- though I have seen degraded plastic pages from other brands of "page protectors" and stamp storage pages. The lack of clear information about plastic stamp pages is one factor that makes me wary of them.

Over the years, I have seen a lot of oily, yellowed plastic stamp holders of various kinds. This convinced me that plastic album pages were to be questioned and maybe avoided. That I use stamp mounts is because the alternative is hinges which clearly do some small damage to stamps no matter what you do and mounts don't do that -- unless they degrade over time, and I've never seen modern mounts do that over many decades of use. So far, anyway.

So, all in all, I trust paper album pages when "aired out" -- but probably not over a hundred years. Long enough, I suppose. And I trust modern stamp mounts. Both have held up well enough and long enough. So far. On the other hand, I do not trust plastic stamp album pages because I suspect their disintegration will eventually do really serious damage to stamps.

Let's check back in 50 years -- and again in 100 years -- to see if I'm right.

I've worked with plastics for years in the compounding business. Whenever you add a plasticizer, you have the unfortunate consequence that it may eventually leach out and affect its surroundings. Stabilizers are much the same but are there for different reasons.

The most inert product that I have worked with is PTFE, or Teflon. This wouldn't work for stamp archival purposes.

Polyethylene or Polypropylene would be my choice. Ethylene is the most simple molecule with only carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds … nothing else. The "poly" just means long-chained, which, in my field, meant the possibility of "entanglement" which gave the plastic film strength in multiple directions.

So a pure, clean, Polyethylene would be my choice, if it is listed as the only ingredient. However, pure polyethylene tends to stick strongly to itself. A small amount of an anti-stick powder is sometimes added while rolling the film. Unfortunately, then we have the question of whether that powder will affect my stamps. Oh well.

Teflon? Just transferring my collection to my frying pan now.

Going a bit off topic, Teflon (DuPont brand name) or Polytetrafluoroethylene, is one of the slipperiest substances known. Lower friction than wet ice on wet ice. Some of the materials I designed with Teflon are on Mars right now in the wheel bearings of some vehicles.

But, Teflon is not opaque. So …

Also, don't ever heat your frying pans above 640F or the fumes could cause what was referred to as Polymer Fever.

I am using the Prinz stock sheets which are really high quality and work well, they write:
"Made from PH neutral black card, with polyester clear strips affixed"

I am not an archival expert, but from what I had heard, Polyester is ok.
And I really enjoy looking at those pages.

Example:
https://www.amosadvantage.com/produ...6-row-1-side

well actually I use those same stock sheet but with less holes on the left:
https://www.ihobb.com/c/PRINZ_STOCKSHEETS.html

(I use the single sided)

For me this isn't a problem, since I avoid plastics altogether. Easy for me to do, since I only collect used material, so no fiddling with mounts with 95% of the material I work with.

Nothing's perfect, certainly not paper, but at least with paper, it's easier to keep an eye on its condition and rehouse the material if needed. The visual cues are usually pretty obvious. Not always the case with plastic.

As for paper - I have 120 year old albums that were housed in a stable environment (few fluctuations in temperature and humidity) and printed on high-quality paper with a high cotton content. No yellowing, toning, etc. On the other hand, the pages of my 2018 Scott Catalogue are starting to yellow at the edges, so go figure.

With all things paper, check for something like this on the package:


Most of the signs are window-dressing. The key is the first sign ISO9706.

Although there are recycled papers with ISO9706 label, I'd refrain from that avenue.

It's remarkable that I had books published in the 1820s, on rag-based paper, that still looked good nearly 200 later, whereas, in the 1980s, Faber notoriously contrived to produce books whose pages were turning brown before they left the warehouse.