The Cost Of Stamp Hinges , Time To Look Again.

I don't think they are, particularly, and they have a revolting colour, but they're familiar to American collectors. Most decent hinges of a certain vintage have the requisite easy peelability that modern hinges lack.

Exactly. No comparison with a modern hinge - though I understand some people here use them happily (with care). Give me a vintage folded (or unfolded) hinge any day!

John

It should be noted that Dennison made hinges in a color other than the light green
https://stampsmarter.org/learning/G...ennison.html
Don

I use Dennison or fold-o-hinges only .........I tried them all ,I will pay the extra cost so much easier to remove than the newer "hinges of steel "

The British had a very good hinge it came in a little box of 1,000 ,these sell now at prices higher than the Dennison packet .

They cost 25¢ in 1980? So still less than a dollar in 2022 dollars, and implying production cost is also less than $1. So if somebody can reverse engineer Dennison's secret formula (thanks for the interesting link, Don) and manufacture exactly the same thing and backed by a currently operating company, they could easily get $10 a pop for these I think -- 90% profit margin.

If there were good money to be made in reviving a truly peelable hinge it would have been done. Philatelic supplies in general are abundant and judging by the quantity and variety of expensive catalogs, albums and sundry accessories available there is a strong market. I would not be surprised to see the current hinges that everyone is dissatisfied with go away sooner than later. Who is buying them? Everyone complains about them.

In my opinion it is not an adhesive or paper issue, it was something that Dennison did during the production process (possibly layering and texturing the adhesive) that made them so peelable. Whatever it was and given the amount of time and money that has been spent trying to replicate, we can assume that the 'secret' has been lost to history.

Of course technology could be used to make a new peelable hinge but the feasibility and return on investment probably has not been met. As long as they can sell the poor-quality ones they have now, I doubt anyone will risk investing in innovating a new hinge.
Don

TSMATX----It was tried a few years ago and they were called Dennis Hinges , nobody is sure of the method or how the glue was applied and what went into it .


I have my guesses --I was in college in Denver and had a night job at Horner-Waldorf box company . One job I had was a hot waxer of Monfort Beef Co. boxes . We used a thin wax at a high tempeture to coat the inside of the boxes ,then a second run thru the waxer at a lower temperture to put a heaveier coat. My guess those hinges maybe had two coats of glue at a heated temperture which kept the glue very thin .

You are right, there, rogdcam. Here is my promise to my SCF brethren - If I win the MegaMillions lottery tonight, I will revive production of the easily-peelable hinge, a la 1950's style. They will become the new standard. Thoughts of trolling old cartons of supplies for those few packs of premium hinges will vaporize. Junk lots will be junk-priced once again. The new ones will be priced so reasonably, one will wonder how the manufacturer could possibly make money - don't worry, he won't have to! As a promo, I will offer 10 free packs to any SCF members that ask.

The secret to "peelability" is printing the adhesive in a matrix of tiny, spaced-apart dots, like a halftone image of a photo, when viewed after printing, under magnification. This is the technique that 3M used in the Post-it Note. I litigated patent issues in this field in the early 1990s. The relevant patents have long since expired. And actually the more difficult challenge is formulating an adhesive that can be printed in this manner using a multi port nozzle like an inkjet printer, for several hours, without clogging.

The dogfight continues!

I will no doubt will be shouted down once again. But the hypothesis about the gum formulation today being different is valid by my experience.

I sent out a recent bill using my store-bought gummed (and not self-adhesive) envelope. I did lick it shut and took it directly to the mailbox. Upon the last second check at the box, it was completely unsealed. Then I was reminded that I needed to really disturb the gum surface to make the gum stick. It is thickly applied gum, too. The first characteristic is true of modern hinges and most of those have relatively thickly applied gum as well. Neither is true of classic Dennison hinges. Therefore, I think the current formulation on envelopes and hinges is a tropical-type formula that's not going to melt and stick in heat or high humidity. It needs to be quite disturbed to work as an adhesive. Plus that gum sticks really well when applied the right way, good for mailing envelopes but not what we want for hinges. You can experiment with current envelopes yourself.

So, if that's what's available off the shelf, what about PV/PVA gum?

Also, what will you be willing to pay for a modern pack of hinges that are truly peelable? That price point is going to rule the decision to make better hinges.

tstmax, I don't know how you figured current equivalents for 1980 prices, but the US consumer price index is the thing to use for goods. Using that, something that cost 25c in December 1980 directly equals $3.23 in December 2021, not less than a dollar.

Good question! I would pay in the $7.50-10.00 range per pack of 1,000 all day long...

John

I found this from the Collectors Club of Chicago:

Stamp hinges are one of the philatelic products most used by stamp collectors. When the original stamp hinge test results were received, second tests were conducted on the most popular name-brand stamp hinges to confirm the original results; no differences were found. Not one brand of stamp hinge manufactured in the United States was found to be non-acidic.

The Swedish-brand hinge, Novofold, was alkaline. In order to determine how one manufacturer could produce a glassine hinge that was acid-free, the independent laboratory was engaged to conduct further tests on the Swedish hinge, comparing the analytical results to one of America's leading hinge brands, Fold-O-Hinge. Separate tests were requested for the glassine, and for the glassine's adhesive. The laboratory test procedures were as follows:

Prior to the testing procedures, the samples were conditioned at a standard Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI) temperature of 73ºF and 50% relative humidity; all of the requested qualitative and quantitative test procedures were performed in accordance with standard TAPPI testing methods.
A cold extraction pH test was prepared from the two samples using 1.0 gram sample + 70 ml distilled water. The mixture was covered with a watch glass, and was allowed to stand for one hour at room temperature. The mixture was stirred three times at regular intervals to insure the total wetting of stamp hinges, and the total solution of the mucilage adhesive.
After one hour, the liquid portion was decanted into a second 100 ml beaker, and the liquid samples were saved for their pH determinations.
The remaining stamp hinges were washed three times with 10 ml portions of distilled water; the washings were discarded. 70 ml of distilled water was added to the beakers with the hinges, and the samples were allowed to stand for one hour at room temperature preparing for pH determinations
The pH readings were conducted on the first wash water, and on the water extract of the washed hinges, with the following results:

Stamp Hinges pH Readings
Sample Test No. 912-19 912-21
Hinge Brand Fold-O-Hinge Novofold
pH Before Aging 5.8 7.1
pH After Aging 5.4 6.7
pH pH Unaged Reserve 0.0 0.5
pH Aged Reserve 0.0 0.5
pH of Adhesive Solution 5.4 7.2
pH of Washed Paper 6.1 7.1
Glassine paper is a smooth, transparent paper manufactured from chemical pulps that have been heavily machined. This type of paper is grease proof, and when waxed, is practically impervious to air and vapors. Sample 912-21 (Novofold) is a transparent glassine type of paper. Under normal manufacturing conditions, the glassine should be slightly acidic, but it appears that some type of unknown alkaline process was employed to manufacture the Swedish hinge.

Conversely, Sample 912-19 (Fold-O-Hinge) is a semi-glassine, parchment-type paper that has not been subjected to as much machining as a true glassine. Parchment-type papers of this type are less transparent than glassine, having a white opaque color. The Novofold and Fold-O-Hingeadhesives were analyzed, and both were starch-based adhesives

The following test procedures were conducted to determine the taste, peelability and adhesion of the stamp hinges. Due to the variability of the adhesives found on postage stamps, the tests were performed on hinges affixed to album pages only, and not to stamps.

Prior to the testing procedures, the samples were conditioned at a standard TAPPI temperature of 73ºF and 50% relative humidity; all of the requested qualitative and quantitative test procedures were performed in accordance with standard TAPPI testing methods.

Thirty hinges were selected at random from each of the name brand sealed packages of hinges. The hinges were manually mounted individually on an alkaline-grade stamp album page, being moistened with saliva.
At the time of moistening the hinge with saliva, the taste of the adhesive was recorded: Pleasant, Satisfactory or Starchy.
After one week of storage at room temperature and humidity, the hinges were manually peeled from the album page, and observed for ease of removal, completeness of removal, and tearing.
On the basis of the observations, the hinges were rated for Peelability (Poor or Good), Hinge Strength, and whether the Hinge Tears, or Does Not Tear. If the result determined "10% tear", this indicates that 10% of the hinges that were affixed to the page tore off without leaving a residue on the album page. Peelable indicates that all the hinges were removed from the album page without a residue.

If the pH value is 7.0 the sample is neutral. pH values lower than 7.0 are acidic, and pH values higher than 7.0 are alkaline. It should be noted that a pH 4.0 is ten times more acidic than a pH 5.0, and one hundred times more acidic than pH 6.0.

This is based on data sourced from the United States National Bureau of Standards, and the widely used permanent paper standard America National Standards Institute (ANSI) No. Z39.48

Stamp Hinges
Hinge Brand Test No. pH pre- Aging Peel and Tear* Taste Adhesion
CMC 918.43 4.8 P Pleasant Good
Dennison No 4 912.16 5.4 50%T Pleasant Good
Dennison No 64 912.17 5.1 50%T Pleasant Good
Dennison No 54002 918.24 5.6 P Pleasant Good
Fold-O-Hinge 912.19 5.8 50%T Pleasant Good
ExactaPhil 918.21 5.0 10%T Pleasant Good
G & K Hobby 912.20 5.6 PT Satisfactory Good
Stanley Gibbons 922.1 5.7 75%T Starchy Good
La Mor 918.22 5.3 100%T Pleasant Good
NovoFoldfactory Good 912.21 7.1 PT Satisfactory Good
Scott 918.23 5.8 50%T Pleasant Good
Western Stamp 912.18 5.12 P Pleasant Good

https://www.collectorsclubchicago.o...ic-products/

Supply and demand is why prices of anything, including old stamp hinges, are so high. It's just as true about cars which are in relatively short supply (due to the chip shortage, etc.) as well just about everything else people want now that the pandemic is waning and demand has skyrocketed for everything. Greater demand drives prices up. It's kind of amusing to live in a highly capitalist society and hear constant commenting about "how high prices are getting". Supply and demand is one of the fundamental principles of capitalism, and yet we constantly complain about it in the form of high prices.

If you want lower prices for the "good" hinges, then someone needs to make more of those hinges -- and no one is doing that. They aren't making peelable hinges anymore even though they're very good hinges, so packets of older hinges that are still out there are worth a lot more. It's as simple as that. It's not about fairness or justice. There are admittedly a few greedy souls out there asking absurdly high prices -- I've seen some sellers asking for $50 a pack or even $80 -- but wherever there's a demand, there are price gougers.

Lots of collectors still use hinges, and I'm one of them, typically for some already-hinged or used stamps. Many collectors prefer the older hinges because they're more peelable. I'm just taking apart a Spain collection, and the collector has consistently used some of the most aggressive, awful, and unpeelable hinges I have ever seen. I've ruined a lot of stamps by trying to remove these hinges. Fortunately, they were cheap, common stamps. I've given up and am now using a pen knife to cut the hinge off the back of the stamp, leaving the hinge remnant on the stamp. That's the appeal of peelable hinges.

I doubt any company is ever going to remanufacture Dennison-style stamp hinges. It would take a lot of effort to produce them, distribute them, and so on, for a fairly modest return given how few stamp collectors there are today -- or how few there are that use hinges.

As for hinges being more or less expensive than stamp mounts, a $25 packet of 1,000 older stamp hinges works out to 2.5c a hinge, and there are still a lot of older hinges going for less than that, so maybe 2c per hinge is more realistic. On the other hand, $5-6 packet of stamp mounts has maybe 20 strips in it, each of which can be cut into about 4-5 separate mounts with a little wastage usually left over. That's 100 mounts per package, but often as little as 80 when you're mountijng larger stamps as I often seem to be doing. That works out to 5-6 cents a mount -- which is twice as expensive as hinges, not the same. If you use cheaper modern hinges (just don't try to remove them!) or buy some older hinges for less than $25 a packet, your hinge price can be as little as 1c per hinge or less. Hinges are cheap; mounts are not as cheap. One of the appeals of stockbooks, I suppose.

I'm wondering how long it's going to be before some audacious capitalist prints up some forgeries of Dennison hinge packets and fills them with modern hinges. Probably not worth a prison term to make a few quick bucks, though. There's a seller in Canada who still sells Fold-O-Hinges (which were also good hinges) but his are modern hinges, not the older style. I think he may have purchased the old "Fold-O" brand name, but these are now modern hinges that don't peel well. So they are no better than any other modern hinge. I'd avoid Canadian Fold-O-Hinges. And of course, there's "Dennisen" Hinges (with an 'e') which are a kind of semi-forgery by someone hoping to cash in on unwary buyers with spelling difficulties. These are modern hinges made to appear like the old ones, but they aren't.

Lately, it's a frightening jungle out there in Stamp Land, so beware. And you thought collecting stamps was a safe, easy-going hobby!

"The secret to "peelability" is printing the adhesive in a matrix of tiny, spaced-apart dots, like a halftone image of a photo, when viewed after printing, under magnification. This is the technique that 3M used in the Post-it Note."

This might be true for self-adhesive Post-it Notes, but it will not work for hinges - as soon as you wet them the tiny dots will merge.