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disposal of 35 mm slides


John Elk

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Dear All.  Realizing that my 400,000 or so 35 mm transparencies are now essentially worthless (and are taking up a lot of room) I am trying to decide what is the easiest and most efficacious way of disposing of them.  All of them are stored in 20 images per sheet plastic sheets and every one of them is labeled with identification and my name.  The most obvious thing to do is just to slowly throw them out in the trash, but ideally I would like to take the slides out of the sheets, which I would then hope to recycle (though given their age none of these sheets has the triangle recycling symbol on them and as I used different products over time I'm quite sure they're not all of the same composition).  I suppose I am also a bit worried about the fact that my name is on each slide, though I can't image anyone pawing through old, discarded images to try to resell them; still, it's something I do worry about a bit.  The only colleague I know personally who has done this put his images in a trashcan and then threw bleach on them before disposing of them, but this would use a LOT of bleach and wouldn't take care of the label issue.  I think this is as much detail as my problem deserves, so if you have any ideas/solutions to share with me I would be very much obliged.  Thank you all! 

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4 hours ago, DCSmith said:

Was your relative Jay Maisel?

Because that's a very well known Jay Maisel story.

No, my relative wasn't Jay Maisel, and this was back in the 1960's. I would have liked to be related to Jay Maisel as well, though.

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12 hours ago, Robert M Estall said:

some weird advice.. You want to move on? let's go!

 

 

My intention was to be helpful.

 

If the OP really wants to destroy all trace of these slides then there are companies that specialise in securely shredding and destroying sensitive data of all sorts. To such companies this would surely be a very easy, simple task.  

 

My interpretation of the OP's request was that he wanted other suggestions. 

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On 17/02/2020 at 19:08, John Elk said:

Dear All.  Realizing that my 400,000 or so 35 mm transparencies are now essentially worthless (and are taking up a lot of room) I am trying to decide what is the easiest and most efficacious way of disposing of them.  All of them are stored in 20 images per sheet plastic sheets and every one of them is labeled with identification and my name.  The most obvious thing to do is just to slowly throw them out in the trash, but ideally I would like to take the slides out of the sheets, which I would then hope to recycle (though given their age none of these sheets has the triangle recycling symbol on them and as I used different products over time I'm quite sure they're not all of the same composition).  I suppose I am also a bit worried about the fact that my name is on each slide, though I can't image anyone pawing through old, discarded images to try to resell them; still, it's something I do worry about a bit.  The only colleague I know personally who has done this put his images in a trashcan and then threw bleach on them before disposing of them, but this would use a LOT of bleach and wouldn't take care of the label issue.  I think this is as much detail as my problem deserves, so if you have any ideas/solutions to share with me I would be very much obliged.  Thank you all! 

 

Sold on Ebay in the uk in lots of 500 slides at say £18 gross, I make it that 400,000 slides would gross about £14,000 before expenses. It would be a lot of work, however. They could be sold in larger lots for a less ambitious gross figure. I appreciate people on here might not want to do that. But large lots are far from worthless, in case anyone wants to go down that route. 

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This is much easier than chemicals, punching, fire or other ways to destroy a slide. Bucket of water or barrel of water. They don't have to soak for very long either. My storage are was hit by a small drainage flood. Water came in, water drained out, every slide was ruined. You could do the same in your sink with warm water, put the slides in, scoop them out, into garbage bags, leave them damp, done. What the water doesn't do, the emulsion will dissolve, mildew will eat them in no time.

 

Water: fungus?

bad-slide-water-mold.jpg

 

Personally I would save everything. If the pages are useful for the future, take out the slides, put them into old shoe boxes. Old slides are not so obsolete that some of them must have a possible future value? I have glass mounted 2 1/4 square slides, that I kept. Most likely no future resale value but I can't part with them.

 

Some have changed colors and some have fungus starting. So much for the arguments that film is better than digital? Backup is 100% forever as long as you can read the medium that the digital image is stored on. Paper changes color, slides change color, mold, fungus, film and prints are actually rather delicate in some situations, like less than perfect storage.

 

Time will destroy them. 😀

 

Age: 1950- early 60s slide, that was kept in a dry closet, in a home.

castaways-pool-ocean.jpg

 

Edited by Klinger
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21 hours ago, vpics said:

Bequeath them to your kids.

 

That worked for all the old photos and slides that my Sister took home when my parents passed away. We haven't seen any of them since. Like dropping them into a black hole.

 

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