Jay, here's hoping that the Pioneer album and its design has come a long way from this type of photo album my parents got to place family photos inside.
This was many years ago, maybe the early to mid 1980s. As you describe, each page has a smooth acetate sheet over each solid "page" of the album, that was slightly "tacky." One would peel the clear sheet back, place the photos, and then smooth the acetate back over, holding the pics in place.
After all these years, we found that many of the photos had become permanently stuck to that tacky surface, causing damage to the back of the pics ( we needed to remove a good number to use on some family photo boards for a function recently). Again, we are talking decades since the pics were placed in these albums, and that's why I was asking (and hoping) that new versions of these types of albums have improved. Even though placed in these albums long ago, those slightly tacky surfaces should not have eventually almost "glued" the photos to them.
The last thing I'd want would be for the backs of vintage LC to get stuck on the pages, causing the same kind paper loss damage, should one want to remove them for any reason.
I went back to that original album last night and examined all the pages. I found some results that were very interesting. This album contained posters from several eras, from the early 40 up to the early 90s. It also contained some pages of 8x10 stills from the 1950 up to the late 1990s. Each of these eras had a different amount of stickiness.
Early posters, those with the relatively coarse paper stock and matte finish, were very easy to remove. The edges actually lifted when the acetate cover was removed and no force was required. The more modern lobbies from the 80s and 90s with the glossy face and the smoother back were attached more tightly. I had to get a fingernail underneath and carefully lift them. The level of stickiness was about what I expected.
Early stills on paper photo stock were about the same as early lobby cards. They jumped right off the page. However, the newer stills with the polycarbonate stock were held rather tightly They required very careful handling to get them removed, and a couple of times, gently working them off with the edge of a kitchen knife.
My father wrote a series of articles for Modern Photography in 1978 on the characteristics of the new RC paper. This was the conversion from paper stock to the polycarbonate based stock and that article does a pretty good job of pinning the time of the conversion.
Based on my small sample size of about 50 pages in a single album, I'd make the following tentative conclusions. The magnetic photo album is tentatively OK for lobby cards up to around 1975. It seems to be OK for lobby cards well into the 1990s, although the effort to remove will be higher. It is also OK for stills and photographs that use a paper based stock.
I would not recommend this album for later lobby cards, especially those foreign cards printed on thin stock. I also would not recommend it for newer photographs using modern photo paper (anything produced after 1977). It is easy to distinguish newer RC paper from the earlier paper based stock. The paper based stock is a bit rough and your finger will grab into it a bit. It is totally flat matte to the eye. The RC paper is shinier and your finger will easily run across it. The paper stock will absorb water a bit, while water will bead up on the newer RC stock.
Jeff, I apologize for letting the topic drift so far from Boxdog's request. You might want to consider merging the album comments with my earlier thread on this album
