Greetings From Seattle!

Hello,
New person here from the lovely wet city of Seattle!

I'm a third-generation casual stamp/coin collector, which translates to being in possession of a few thousand miscellaneous US and international stamps dating back to the late 1800's but mostly from the 1950's, with zero semblance of order!
Because I'm a college kid away from home, I won't be posting pictures of stamps any time soon, but I'll be lurking until I can. I'm the only one in the family now still bothering with stamps, but the organization job is going to take a very long time.

I do have two starting questions- a few years ago I was carefully taught by an older friend to cut stamps off envelopes and soak them in warm water to un-gum them. First, with all the talk I've seen of cancellation marks, is this still done/preferred, or is a stamp with envelope whole now desired?
Second, someone's lovely bright red Christmas envelope corner turned a dozen or so other stamps in a soak a light pink. Is there a way to remove paper dye?

Thanks very much!
~Andere

Welcome. As for your red paper soaking problem. I don't have an answer on how to untint that batch of stamps. Moving forward though I would suggest separating any stamps on colored paper, manilla envelopes, and cardboard when soaking. I am not a soaker for quite a while. I generally keep the full cover.

Big Aussie from Oz. We are new as well. Great to hear that you're taking on the family collection. Happy stamping. Keep posting. Lots can happen without a scan. KGV & family.

Welcome to the SCF, Andere.

Soaking stamps or keeping the cover is really personal preference. There are many stamps being produced now that don't soak off too well, if at all. I choose to keep the stamp on paper and just trim close to the stamp.
When it comes to coloured envelopes, as Stamperdude said, seperate them first. When I was soaking stamps, I just floated them on top of the water, stamp facing up and leave them just long enough to seperate.

Steve

Welcome Andere

Dianne

You'll find lots of friendly and knowledgeable folks here.

KirkS

Stick with the hobby....it will bear fruit !
Even pink fruit !

G'Day and to the forum

from another one down under.

Andere I really don't know how to remove the pink from the stamp.

Thanks all for the very warm welcome!
I'll keep an eye on those red envelopes from now on; in the mean time, I'll experiment a bit and see if I can't remove the stain with a little bleach or detergent. The stained stamps are nothing special (I think!).

A very small amount of bleach and very little time in the solution so as not to do permanent damage to the stamp just might do the trick. good luck.

Welcome Andere!

A city on the ocean (or close to) is a great place to live. I live in Halifax, just a short walk across the continent fro you. I hear its warmer but wetter out there. Does that affect keeping mint stamps? I find any old ones seem to curl up on me rather quicker than I would like them to.

As for the red menace, I don't know for sure but bleach sounds like it would bleach the whole stamp, not just the extra red ink in the paper. Maybe just further soaks in warm water will eventually lessen the pinkishness. Or tr varying the water temperature and time soaking.

Any chemical is going to react with the other inks present also after a time a time. Dish washing soap (mild) might be a thing to add to the water.

It is always good to hear of results of any experiments thouugh. Please share your results with us too.

Good luck

Enjoy the stamps!

Puzzler, thanks for the welcome!
No, I haven't noticed the humidity affecting stamps, though I have noticed that leaving them face-up to dry after soaking lets them curl rather badly, while leaving them face-down makes them dry flat. Our house is wood-stove heated and tends to be drier on the inside than usual.

I'll try a few things on those stained stamps next time I'm home. Several are common current issue stamps, so no worries of they end up totally bleached!