To Hinge Or Not Hinge

I have seen a lot of used stamps on this forum with hinges or hinge remnants. How many collectors on this forum use hinges and how many use mounts?
I have always used mounts and soak off any hinge on any stamp I purchase before mounting them. My rational is that eventually, I will have both a used and a mint example of most of my stamps. Some I will never have a mint but my albums will look then same. Besides, quite often a hinge will hide a defect that otherwise is not readily apparent.

Mounts only here, I haven't used a hinge in more than 30 years.

This has been an ongoing discussion. Most is personal preference. My main U.S. collection is all mounts and my Bureau precancels are all hinge.

for me this an easy one...absolutely no hinges. I think that they destroy an otherwise perfect specimen. Mounts or stockbook only here.

Use only Supersafe albums from Holland or the black plastic from Germany. I wish it were possible to go back in time and strangle anyone sticking hinges onto stamps as it is much more probable to damage the stamp and it drops the value. Also @@#$##% to those who do things awful to stamps like cut squares. Lockumup

When I returned to collecting I took all the stamps I kept from my old collection and redid all the pages using mounts. Trying to collect only older or mint stamps (or older mint) it seems sacrilege to use hinges.

If printing my own pages, I use mounts exclusively. I do use hinges with my US and Spain pre-printed albums (unless I have a more valuable MNH item which is then mounted).

I wish I had never used hinges when I was younger and have vowed never to use them again.

I've been in the process of converting to all hingeless albums over the past 5 years. For those countries which I do not yet have a hingeless album, I put new material into stockbooks with Vario pages. Yes, it's expensive, but I want to be a good steward.

Brian

Mounts can be expensive for common stamps of little value, so I hinge the common stuff; use mounts for better material and/or specially printed album pages that I make for which I desire a look of consistency.

Since mounts can cost upwards of 5 to 10 cents apiece (depending on size) there is little benefit to using them for a stamp worth a catalog minimum of 20 or 25 cents. In special situations where I don't want to invest in mounts, but don't want to hinge the stamp either, I'll use stock book pages as the next best thing.

I started up late last year using hinges to add material to my 60 year old album. I quickly found myself acquiring more stamps than the album could handle and now am transferring select countries (one at a time)into Lindner stockbooks. The rest go into glassines or manila stock cards or varios awaiting the day when their turn arrives.

PS:It's really easy now to pull out a stamp and scan it for SCF

Hmmmm... my favorite, tasty I like em better than gum.

I collect used only, and hinge all my stamps in my national. I prefer the look of neatly hinged and placed stamps.

LOL, Fred. I've been accused by my family of licking too many stamps ... which is why, they say, I spend hours at a time organizing my collection.

When I was younger, I hinged my used stamps because it was the most economical way of handling stamps. Since I retired and resumed collecting stamps, I decided that mounts or vario pages were the best way to do to display both my used and mint stamps.

I use a combination of hinges for albums and dealer sales pages in the small binders for the rarer or more expensive stamps and stock pages for the left overs. The foreign pages for the Scott NON-specialty albums only have spaces for the low value stamps so the higher denominations end up in the dealer sales pages. I try to put as many of the lower value items as possible in the album with hinges to conserve space. These stamps, whether hinged or not, are not going to fund anyone's retirement plan.

I am a shape changer.
I have gone from never hinged to always hinge.
I do not collect gum, and dislike a Hagner style album,
I'll echo fredcdobbs and like the look and
feel of a hinged page.
That being said, I wouldn't hinge a valuable stamp
I like to think of the Aussie Bridge stamp,
at $500 that would be counter productive, I would sell
and hinge a lower rated copy.

First to answer the question, I do not hinge more valuable stamps and do hinge some modern stuff.

Now a personal note. When I began collecting in the late 1950's as a teenager, the stamps we regard as classics today were not so regarded, except for the 19th century items. Even those were for the most part not beyond hinging.

Today I have noticed that the 19th century US appears much more fragile (heck, I am more fragile) than they did 50 years ago. An issue such as the Washington-Franklins 50 years ago were a plentiful and common item. (Not the rarities of course) Now, the W-F's are a much more delicate issue. They do not take well to any mistreatment. To me hinging is a form of mistreatment. There has to be a finite number of times a stamp can be hinged, removed and rehinged before irreparable damage occurs. ( I think the same thing can be said about soaking)

Since the notion that we are stewards of our stamps for future generations has been mentioned, I really think we need to take this seriously. If someone had not saved the stamp now in our collections, we would not have it. The same holds true for those to come.

Sorry for the long post. Let's get back to collecting and enjoying.