Newb Questions About Straight Edges

Why are these so unpopular as to decrease the value? Why do some early stamps have perforations and straight edges? I see a lot of the cheaper copies of early stamps have a straight edge or two.

Also, when it comes to hinges on otherwise mint stamps, how much does that generally decrease the value on older stamps compared to never hinged and compared to the catalog value?

Also if anyone has any guidelines on when to use show guard mounts vs hinges that would be great. I had intended to use the mounts for everything in my album but i'm not sure i'm getting anything out of mounting a 15 cent stamp that way!

In my collection, if the stamp is used, has already been hinged and/or is more or less common (CV less than $1.00 ) I usually hinge it. otherwise, I am probably going to use mounts. One trick is in getting good hinges. I am still using pretty good ones from 20 years ago! If you have a doubt, mount it.

Hi PatrickM


I mount every stamp, regardless of value, in a Showgard mount. That way the page looks consistent. It sounds expensive but when I started using the mounts I bought what I needed at the time. Gradually I built a stock of mount sizes. That way the cost is not prohibitive.

Jerry B

Hi Patrick. I see you got an answer on one of your questions, but not on the other! I will attempt to explain a bit about straight edges, but please keep in mind I may not touch all possibilities.
One of the main reasons for one or two straight edges on older stamps is the way they were printed. If you read the introduction of the Scott catalog it explains it. Some stamps were printed in large sheets that were cut to size. This sometimes left one or two rows of stamps with a straight edge on one side. Depending on the place in the sheet, the stamp sometimes had two straight edges.
Another common reason would be that the stamp came out of a booklet. Again, reading the intro in the Scott catalog would explain things!
A third, common occurrence is that the stamp is a coil stamp. These stamps have two straight edges on opposite sides and came from a roll.
Coil- and booklet stamps are still being made!
Hope this helped a little bit?

Peter

Go to

https://goscf.com/t/40351

and scroll down to I Love Stamps 11-03-2014
and the following comments

for some graphics that help explain the whole process

If one wants to mix mounted and hinged stamps in the same album or on the same page, clear mounts work nicely for this. Having a portion mounted and a portion hinged wouldn't look the greatest if you're using mounts with a black background, but it looks just fine if you use clear mounts.

I collect a lot of different countries, some pretty seriously, others very casually. In all, I probably add a good 1000-2000 stamps per month to my collection on average. That many mounts would be pretty expensive, so I hinge the vast majority of them. But I do place MNH and more valuable stamps in mounts.

One other minor thing to consider with mounts is "bulk". Mounts can cause one binder album to become 2 binder albums when a lot of stamps are collected and placed in mounts that cause the thicker pages to fill out an album's width.

I use mounts plus glassine page interleaving which created so much "bulk" my one album became 3 to accommodate the "bulk".