To Hinge Or Not Hinge

I see no shame in hinging a postally used stamp !!

I do not mind having a hinge on a used stamp as I can just soak it in water and the hinge and any residue comes right off.

Mint stamps with gum will have some gum removed or disturbed and so not be considered post office fresh.

Here is an example of one of my hinged pages.

Dianne

Wow! nice Dianne.
are your pages self designed? or purchased?

Very nice Dianne, now that's what I'm talking about. Clean and uncluttered.

Very nice indeed. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks guys.

They are from the stampalbums.com site. They are Bill Steiner pages. I pay 30 bucks a year and get all the countries/ pages I need. I would love to design my own but just don't have time right now.

If I hinged the selvage of a MNH stamp, would the stamp be still considered MNH?

I must revive this conversation. Having read through most of the posts, I hope I didn't miss the answer to my question: what do people do with CTOs? This is definitely a "to hinge or not hinge" question for me! There's something about putting a hinge on a stamp with gummed back that goes against my grain, even though the front has been cancelled. So for now, I keep my CTOs in stock pages. What do other people here do to integrate them into your collection?

CTO stamps are great to collect but, my collection is only U.S. so I don't need them. I think it would be OK to hinge them as they are not mint. That being said, I would have the same problem with hinging a gummed stamp as well.

They have not served any postal aspect other than to raise money from collectors. More often than not, they are the major source of revenue for some postal administrations. I never really understood why they bothered to cancel them in the first place, other than dening the value of a true mint to the collector.

Art

I collect US stamps and I hinge all common minimal value stamps. When I purchase a nice used stamp worth $5 dollars or even a stamp that catalogues for $1 dollar I will use a mount.

Lets say that .20 cent stamp is worth something in 25 to 50 years. How much does a hinge mark take away from the value of a stamp?

Hi

I have 2 collections. My main collection is mint, with a scattering of used in the classic period, and a used collection. The mint collection is 100% in Showgard mounts. The used collection is hinged.

I use a mount whether the stamp is valued at 25 cents or 25 dollars. It makes the page look uniform. I hinge the used collection for 2 reasons. The used stamps have been soaked to remove any previous hinges, etc. and if they have to be re-soaked to remove any new hinges it is no big deal.

Jerry B

I don't hinge my stamps either, regardless of them being mint or used. I only collect mint US which get mounted in my specialized album, and if they're used like most of my worldwide collection is, I have specific country stockbooks for them.

My personal opinion is that if you hinge stamps, you might as well handle your stamps without tongs either. Hinging stamps leaves them unprotected from the elements as they're always exposed (this applies more to stamps that may hold some monetary value). They also cause stamps to be more prone to being folded when you flip through your album pages when hinges either decide to fall or cause stamps to stick up.

I feel if I'm going to collect something, regardless of its value, I'm going to do my best to not damage it in any way. Mounts or stockbooks is the way to best protect stamps.

My 2 cents on the matter.
CF

I hinge stamps at catalog minimum ... shrug ... I cover my album pages in sleeves so they are protected that way ..