I've often wondered how many people who print their work -really- worry about print longevity.
If the number of people visiting my website is any indication, not too many.
So you are in good company and on pretty solid ground if you look at print longevity merely as a warranty replacement issue, ie. that you give or sell someone one of your images and he or she never comes back at you to say it has noticeably changed in appearance and what can you do about it.
Print longevity doesn't matter until it matters. I recently did some consulting work with a major museum that owns a contemporary color print (valued in the five to six figure range) with subtle but still noticeable fading occurring in this particular print. It was a print with very subtle tones and colors to begin with, so any deviation from the artist's original intent was of concern to museum staff and to the artist that created the work. The museum was storing the image at room temperature and limiting display times. My recommendation was to take it into cold storage to halt its fade rate and exhibit with deliberate discretion to further extend its long term viability as a major work for public viewing. The print in question is by a well known contemporary artist whose career and fame started in the mid 1970s, he is still alive but obviously in the zenith of his life's work, and the work in question is vintage work from the very beginning of his career (so now about 40 years old). He can make another copy of it, but it won't be by definition a vintage print, nor can the original printing process be precisely duplicated. The artist is concerned, the curators are concerned, and all this happening without the typical levels of consumer rated fade criteria yet passed. Enough said.
I love to look at 100 year old prints, especially when they are in excellent overall condition. These precious vintage prints in pristine condition are a relatively rare occurrence, but it has been done in the annals of photographic history, and IMHO, it's worth contemporary artists striving to meet or exceed that goal, and using our modern technologies, when chosen wisely, allow us to do it. Moreover, they will become the vintage prints of this era. That said, one has to care about it, or it's not going to happen.
I would urge all photographers today to think in terms of their printed work as objects placed into a time capsule, giving a glimpse of our lives today to future generations who will want to know about the past in order to help them understand their present and also to help them predict their future. The more accurately each object reveals in the future what we saw in it today, the more valuable it becomes to future generations.
cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com