Modern Covers Recieved In Mail

I have found myself recieving quite a bit o overseas mail in the past couple of weeks. Most of the letters are from stamp swaps and online purchases. The senders of these letters, knowing that I collect stamps, usually place very nice stamps on the letters. I have also recieved some beatifull airmail envelopes from Asia.

These stamps look really nice on cover, but I find that I have the urge to cut up the envelope and soak the stamps.

What should I do? Does anyone else collect covers mailed to their own address or do you just soak for the stamps?

Since I like to study covers, I tend to keep them intact. If I specifically want a particular stamp to mount in my collection, AND if there is no obvious reason to keep the cover - unusual postmark, notation, design, etc. - then I will remove the stamp. Otherwise, I keep the cover intact. Rarely do I remove a stamp just to put it in a box or stock sheet. I always keep in mind that separation of the stamp and cover cannot be reversed. Of course, this means I have boxes of covers!

Hi fernmato

All I can tell you is, I wish now that I had kept some of the
covers instead of soaking off the stamps forty or fifty years ago.

But I was young and foolish.

I look at it this way: Even the commonest letter rate definitive, properly cancelled on its original cover, tells a little story. Soaked off its cover, it tells much less of a story, or no story at all. To me, it's a shame to lose the story.

I cannot soak !
The covers are going where the clothes should be and my wife is getting angry.

One day, I will be overrun.

But I cannot soak.

Londonbus1

I used to tear them off and soak them but since joining SCF I have started a cover collection and have learned to appreciate the cancels and etiquettes and stamps and the whole enchilada, er, package.

I even started buying them, covers that is.

Any nice etiquettes please scan and add to the etiquette thread, along with year and country used please and thank you!

I vote to leave them on cover if you have the room. The value is increased on cover (both intrinsically and monitarily). However if you are a collector and have an album that you want to fill, then soak. It is entirely left up to you and your collecting habits.