Crystal Mounts?

When I was younger I started using the infamous crystal mounts. That appeared to be a pretty good idea at the time. While some of them have started to turn yellow and even wrinkle a little I haven't had much problems with them.

I did find out they are next to impossible to take off without doing some damage to an album page. However I read in a thread that they can damage a stamp. Is this a big problem or just a rare example. Since I used them for MNH stamps in my older album should I replace them?

The good news is that I have converted over to the better mounts some time ago.

They can glaze the gum on mint stamps. I have some plate blocks of duck hunting permit stamps from the 1970s that this happened to.

Mkfarm, thats about my biggest maintenance job..as the glue on the Crystal mounts dries up and the strips become loose in my albums I have to replace them with Showgard mounts... and I still see Crystal mounts advertising in the stamp journals !!

Tried them out once, didn't like them. The glue seemed to leak through the pages, and made your album look like a mess. One of the worst ideas ever.

Was at an estate auction in 1985, got a box of stamp stuff with an old magnifying glass (fold up kind, 5-10 power)made in the 40's I think a bunch of stamps (turned out to be Xmas seals), a black ceramic watermark tray in its own box (which I still use),
and about 30 packs of Crystal Mount (plate block size). I still have about 10 packs left.They're not as good as Showgard
but they do work for plate blocks pretty well especially in the albums I'm making own my own. If an ablum page gets damaged
I can just tear the out & make a new one.

Crystal Mounts were a disaster. They were well used because, in their day, they were the inexpensive mounts.

Damage to stamps from the old mounts was brutal. I've seen collections of nice mint stamps, put together during the 1970's, ruined by the mounts.

David

This is not a paid endorsement:

Showgard!

Thank you!

Okay, you got me worried.
School me...
Dad mounted his stamps in clear plastic faces with
a split rear section, black in color... You drop the
stamp in from behind, where the black material is
split. Then the 2 sections naturally spring back
together. Then they adhere to the page.

Which mounts am I describing?
Will they hurt my stamps?

Ratio, yours sound like Showgard. Crystal have no background and are not split.