Newbie To This Forum And To Collecting Stamps

Hi everyone,

Nice to have joined the group. My collecting interest range from collecting old books, artwork and marbles. I inherited my stamp collection over 40 years ago when my father passed away. They have been sitting in my curio cabinet since then without being touch. Now I have decided to try to learn about them and if possible liquidate them too. I have bought a couple stamp books trying to gain as much knowledge as I can about my stamps. But I do have one important question. When I have contacted a couple stamp dealers the first question that I have been asked each time is how are the stamps stored? Are they in albums? Can someone please tell me why is this important? The reason that I asked is my father did have them in a album but the albums were raged with age so I took them out of the album and put each stamp in their own plastic zip lock bag.

As soon as I tell the stamp dealers this they are not interested anymore. Can someone explain to me why this happens. Thanks Vera

Plastic ziplock bags are no good, the plastic interacts with the stamp paper. A better thing would be to put them in a another album or glassine envelopes. some people (me) store them on 102 cards.

Thanks for the information. The stamps have only been in individual zip lock bags for a about 2 weeks so I hope that hasn't done any damage. I have over 1200 stamps in zip lock bags and that is only about half of my collection. I will correct this mistake this week. Where can I purchase the 102 cards. Vera