Oops!

Did you ever mishandle a stamp thereby causing it to be damaged? I can't recall doing this, but when I was about 8 years old (circa 1958) I was working on my stamp collection and left it out on the kitchen table when I went off to Sunday School. When I came back I found my 60 something year old grandmother "helping me out" as she separated the selvage from plate blocks of 1930's era stamps. I stopped her after she had only helped me with 2 or 3.
In the early 70's I was in Santa Barbara in a coin/stamp store where an "experienced" clerk told about an elderly couple who told him they had inherited some stamps with "blimps on them." Might they be worth something? He told them they might very well be worth quite a bit and they should bring them in. He gave them some glassiness. They came in the next day with a complete set of what had been U.S. Zeppelin plate blocks (c13-15). Unfortunately, they couldn't fit them in the glassines he had provided so they also had trimmed off the selvage. He said he didn't have the heart to tell them the cost of what they had done and they were very happen to receive what he paid them for the blocks.

When I was in college my mother forwarded a whole series of first day covers to me - those issued for Canada's centennial - striking out my home address (in pencil) and ballpointing my college address in. I nearly cried.

This seems appropriate to post here ... one of the biggest "Oops!" of all-time:

If I had a C3a (as with most of us) it would be in a safe deposit box.
Most of my stamps of any value are in a single US hingeless Davo album. It comes with a slipcover. Every time I take the album out I check the slipcover to make sure a stamp hasn't fallen out (never even come close to happening).

In highschool a neighborhood girl showed me the MNH RW1 duck stamp her father had just given her. She had several cockatoos she kept in her room. They were uncaged - maybe their wings were clipped? - this was quite a while ago, 1980. Any way, one of them fluttered over to her and chomped down on the stamp, putting a nice hole right through it!

I once read a story where a guys wife decided to "tidy up" her husbands stamp collection for him by trimming off those unsightly perforations..wouldn't that make you just a little sick? lol Poor fella!

A number of years ago, I was using a pair of stamp tongs to place a Bugs Bunny pane (Scott #3138) into a split-back stamp mount. My hand slipped & I lost control of the pane while I was slipping it into the mount. The result was a couple of separated perfs along the top edge of the 9-stamp pane. When I finally purchased a replacement a couple of years later, the seller warned me to be careful. He, too, had "ruined" a 3138 Bugs Bunny pane. Not an example of ruining a classic, I know ... but painful nonetheless.

The dog ate it!! When I was first starting out I had bought a 'missionary' package from Harris at the local %&dime.. after soaking off the paper and drying I began to separate into country.. I had a dog that would just stand up and lick across any table with anything on it. In my pile of Spain I noted a y early issue. looking into my 1963 Scott's I had determined that it was a #255 which I thought valued at $10. A lot of $$ for an youngster and I thought a find. Now looking back I realized Scott omitted the decimal (used small case numerals for less that $1.00 values) & it was only worth $ .10 (now $.45). Needless to say I quickly learned to watch out for the dog after that so as to not lose any more treasures.

After readaing Eligies post, I had to inject this little piece of humor:

Any stamp damage can upset a collector no matter at what age or what the value of the stamps were.

When I was first introduced to collecting stamps, I went to the house of the people who gave me the stamps and album for my birthday. I was there because there were going to show me how to hinge the stamps into the album. As we were placing the stamps on the table, their little daughter ran up to the table got hold of one of the stamps and crumpled it up and threw it on the floor as she ran away.

Another time, I had a small n scale train window box with a styrofoam insert into which I put a few stamps in it to make it look like a tv. I was so excited about it that I couldn't wait to get home from kindergarten the next day to see it. The only thing was that my young sister helped herself to it, removed the insert and was using it like a little change purse with the ripped stamps as change.

Watch this:

If you some day come across one like this lick it, if its tastes sweet and milky its comes from cup of English tea.