How to remove back from an old sticker

[Monty02]

Hi collectors,

I have been visiting this site and forum for a while, now I have problem which annoys me a lot.
I saw one topic about removing sticker from album, the answers did not satisfy my need.

I like to have some of my albums in mint condition. For those purposes, I dont buy complete album, already filled with stickers, but try to find empty album and stickers set in mint condition. I know this is expensive job in case of old collections, but we are talking about non-football albums older then 1980, for example: Mickey story 1978, West 1976, Prehistoric animals 1977, etc.
Sometimes Im so patience to wait even several years to get the empty album and stickers set. After I get ones, I remove sticker back, add some glue if needed and stick into album very preciselly.
The problem with those old stickers is that 20% Im not able to properly remove their original back, because the glue has dried together with back and a lot of it stays there. So, I use my nail to slowly remove the rest, but it took 2-3 minutes, and after 10 cases Im worned out.
Sometimes I try to get more duplicates in addition to complete sets, in case I damage one sticker, theres always posibility to have another.
Lately, Im trying to complete West 1976, 400 stickers collection. I have one complete set, Mint album in English and aprrox. 500 duplicates. Those stickers are pain in my ass, each 3rd is hard to remove and my patience is gone after filling 1 page, not to mention my nails are damaged scratching the rest of unpeeled back.

How to remove (peel off) back from an old sticker easily?

 

[dantzig]

I've known cases like this recently too, it happens too much with these 70's and some 80's collections.

Have you tried my advice in this post? I can't think of anything better than synthetic diluent (don't know if it's called like this in all countries), because it's (somewhat) effective and it doesn't damage the sticker in any way... Though that seems to me an extreme case, so it would need to be a strong diluent, possibly with a more harmful component (always be sure to use gloves and mask, in a ventilated environment).

Sure, you most likely lose the auto-adhesive property, as diluent "melts" the glue, but that's easy to replace and seems to me it's much better than damaging constantly your nails and fingers.

 

[Monty02]

Holy cow!
its working
Advice worth a milion, my stickers lose was 10%, now 0%.
I bought diluent for paint disolving based on chemical composition S 6300. It disolve glue but not damage the sticker.
Work with it very carefully, its highly agressive, but really working

Thank you very much .