Black Plastic Boxes Used For Slide Storage

Are the boxes that come from Dwayne's good for storing your 35mm slides long term?

I noticed that they are the same one's sold by this company.

 

http://www.archivalsuppliers.com/prodinfo.asp?number=001-1014

 

I know this because I purchased some from them, and they are the exact same ones as Dwayne's. They are no

longer ivory in color.

I much prefer using archival quality slide pages such as Print File or Clear File 20-slide pages. If you need to find a particular slide that's in a box, you have to dump them out and handle them individually and risk getting dust and fingerprints on them. With slide pages, you keep them in a binder and they are readily available for viewing.

This is sacrilegious from an archival point of view I'm sure, but my approach is to use Pot-of-Gold 1 pound chocolate boxes, with a cardboard divider down the longitudinal center. Each box will hold roughly 250 slides (dependant on mount thickness). Little index cards, the same dimensions as a slide except a little higher, are handy for defining the start of each roll.

 

As as you leave a little room in each row and have the slides labelled, finding a slide is a simple matter of thumbing through them, just like a card index.

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if they're made of polypropylene I guess they're fine. You can tell by a small molded triangle with a #5 inside it & a "pp" underneath.

I've got slides in similar plastic boxes that are over 20 years old and they're fine. I keep them in a cool, dry place. On the

other hand, I like Mendel's Pot O'Gold chocolates boxes....because you get to eat the chocolate before using them!

I'm sure there's bad stuff in the cardboard such as chocolate boxes, and the dividers, but I'm not sure how serious that is. On the upside, I think paper tends to keep more stable humidity. And yeah, that's a lot of chocolates to go through. That's the first of about 9 boxes.

polypropylene is safe--the boxes would be okay. better than sleeves in many ways, except for the handling. sleeves have

problems with slip agents and other additives, even if they're labeled as "archival". best way to use sleeves for slides is to

use a mylar D single slide enclosure to hold each slide, then insert it into the page. this way the slide gets protection from

handling as well as potential damage from the page itself.