47lb. Premium Matte

For about the last 40 years I've been making books of family photos to give away at Christmas. Started with film developed and printed on glossy RC paper in the wet darkroom, of course, with pix of the kids for us and grandparents and siblings. Always 8x8 black and white, bound with combs between mat board covers. \n\nSwitched to digital capture and inkjet printing about 20 years ago. After a couple of years floundering around trying to make good prints using glossy inkjet papers and regular Canon and Epson inks with inexpensive printers (the books from those first digital years are pretty ugly now) I found pigment B&W inks and matte papers. Been using Red River matte papers for about 15 years, initially a 50 or so lb and after that was discontinued, the 47lb. \n\nGrandparents have all died, and now it's mostly our kids (and siblings and niece and nephew) getting pictures of their kids. In some years some recipients can receive as many as 200 prints - if you give us a new grandkid you're gonna get a pretty big book. So I need a paper that's reasonably thin but still feels like a photograph, not copy paper with a picture on it. It also needs to be affordable, as all books combined usually total 800-1000 prints. \n\nThe lighter Red River Matte papers have been perfect for this purpose. I stock up for "this season's" books before my wife and I actually finalize who is getting what (all books have different content) and so don't have a perfect count of what will be needed. But Red River shipping is so fast that I just make a best guess, and order a couple hundred more sheets in the middle of the project if it looks like I'll need it.\n\nThis paper also is perfect for our 5x7 Christmas cards. We put a description of what our kids are doing on the back of the card, using a word processing document printed with a fast desktop inkjet, and it comes out great on the non-photo but still printable surface.