I recently got out some color negatives that I have had stored away for
the last 7 years.  I wanted to finally get around to scanning them into
my computer.

The negatives were stored untouched in their original sleeves and
envelopes just as I received them back from the Kodak processing lab 7
years ago.

The first thing that I noticed when scanning the negatives was that the
negative at the end of the strip has a slightly darker narrow strip
running from top to bottom at its edge.

I investigated the rest of the negatives.  All of the end-of-strip
negatives showed the same problem.  I then noticed that this darker
strip corresponded to the amount of negative that was exposed outside of
the negative carrier.  In other words, when they cut the negative strips
and inserted them into the carrier, they did not shove them all the way
inside.  It was this small strip that was sitting outside that looked
lighter on the negative and darker on the print.

Is this a common problem with color negatives that have been stored a
long time?

It is not really such a big problem as it affects only the end negative
on a narrow strip, and it is easy to crop it out in any print that I
want to make from that negative.

I was just curious about it.

Gary