Dennison Hinges On Ebay?

Scott has no control over hinges. The good peelable hinges were manufactured for years (decades). Then the manufacturing process was lost. Even using the original equipment, the hinges could not be replicated.

If R&D is invested to create an equal or better replacement, if can be done, the price in today's dollars will be quite high. Thus far hinges of the best quality are not costly enough to warrant the investment with no guarantee of success. Even the type of adhesive used then is highly regulated now.

There are SCF threads on the topic.

Wait until you begin to price modern watermark fluid.

I know I have three or four of those packs around. They just aren't in the same place becasue I have never used them. Maybe I should try to sell them one day too.

So, stamp hinges were supposedly invented in the 1860's and a long run of high quality hinges were made and now cannot be reproduced? It's certainly a low cost, low profit item, but sheesh!

At those prices, I'd just switch to mounts. Presumably a lot of people paying those crazy prices for Dennisons want to keep the mounting consistent throughout their album(s), but if you use clear mounts instead of those on a black background, having a page of stamps mixed between hinged and mounted isn't that noticeable. Or if one doesn't want to mix mounting methods on a single page, they can just keep a given page the same, but switch to mounts on certain pages, etc.

There's a thread on this somewhere, but Subway Stamp tried really hard to reproduce the hinges but couldn't quite get it right, Most hinges from the 1940s to the 1970s will do a pretty good job, but Dennison is the best. Fold-O-Hinge a close second. One thing about mounts, when I strip albums, very few mint stamps are mounted correctly, there is almost always some gum disturbance and many times I run into mint stamps that were previously hinged placed in mounts! I just hinge mint stamps, I know... I know... blasphemy!

When it comes time to sell, most stamps of the last 80 years have the same sale value be it NH or H. With US material that is face value as postage or below.

One can still get on a #10 (legal size) envelope either 10 6 cent stamps or my favorite, 15 4 cent stamps. I just sent a 3 ounce letter with 27 4 cents stamps paying the $1.08 in postage.

That's true more or less. The only thing I would say is that modern gummed stamps that are MNH have collectable value. Most collectors would pass on hinged items as the pricing would be relatively negligible between a mnh and hinged stamp. When one is .50c and the other is .25c...

From my perspective, most modern unused gummed stamps,1940-up, that have been hinged, are only useful for postage.

Excellent point - I would add that "if" you use clear mounts exclusively, say on Steiner pages, you can easily edit the Steiner pages (using LibreOffice Draw) so that each box has a black fill - the text in the box being white. This is really the best of both worlds, as you get the subdued look of clear mounts on a black background. The only downside is that it does use a bit more black ink, but if you are doing each page separately, it's not that bad. Ink migration is also not an issue, as the stamp is mounted in a clear mount. Finally, there is a huge advantage as the back fill in the boxes are uniform in size - which looks good if you are cutting from strips of clear mounts. The cut does not have to be exact.

John



(Edited to add an image showing the final result of the above method).

I would add that there seems to be a lot of boxes of 50 packets of Dennison Hinges poping up at auctions at a regular basis . Every year for the past 20 years there has been at least 2 auctions a year which offered complete boxes of 50 packs of Dennison Hinges ......really strange but you see it every year .

Of course nobody's forcing anyone to use them, but some prefer hinges for cost or aesthetic reasons, and I think there's an argument to be made that they're much more beginner-friendly than mounts. We're always wringing our hands on here about the lack of newcomers to the hobby; I'd wager that ensuring a continuous supply of quality, affordable hinges is key to attracting and retaining new stamp collectors.




Sure, APS doesn't control the hinge business, but if one of their stated reasons for existence is the longer-term stewardship of the hobby, they should be thinking (as should the rest of us) of the supplies, like hinges, that enable the hobby to exist, and thinking about how to ensure their continued existence. Perhaps they could direct time/money/attention to the issue?

There's nothing they can do. The gummed paper that old hinges were made from doesn't exist anymore. It isn't that nobody makes the Dennison-style hinges anymore, it's that they can't. All modern hinges are made by the same company and they all suck, and will always suck, because the supplies to make good hinges don't exist anymore.

I don't think the will to spend the money to research what glue was applied to the old hinges is there. There is just no way that with today's technology and forensic equipment capabilities that the composition of the glue and paper cannot be determined. More than likely there is something in the glue that in today's day and age would be against regulations to use. It is the same in my other hobby of model railroading. Years ago you could obtain a fantastic styrene glue for model structures, but due to carcinogenic concerns it was removed and all of the replacements are full of warnings and no where near as effective.

What is also not being addressed is that even for mounts, clear or black, I believe based on a topic in this forum last year that we are down to one manufacturer there as well. So what happens if they decide it is no longer profitable?

After Hawid announced that they were closing in 2021 Lighthouse stepped in and purchased the Hawid trademarks, machinery and plastic stock so there must be money to be made in mounts. Hawid did make mounts for Lindner, Safe and Lighhouse. Not sure if Lighthouse now supplies the others or just themselves. They are mostly top mounts. Prinz and Scott are made by the same company, but I don't know which one. The other company that makes mounts is Secol which sells only in Europe I believe.

Given the money that people are spending on vintage "good" hinges I have to believe that it is an issue, as others have said, of no longer being able to source the material components.

I've most likely spent $1k or more on Hawid clear mounts for my US collection in 8 Scott albums.

I would think the easiest way to improve upon the crappy, modern hinges would be for the manufacturer to simply apply less gum to the glassine. There's simply too much of it on the hinge - way too much, in my opinion. If they used half as much, there would still be enough for the hinge to adhere to the stamp but it would, in theory at least, detach more easily and cleanly.

Of course, they may well have already tried this and found there were other drawbacks with doing such a thing. I would at least hope they wouldn't overlook something so simple. I also wonder if they could simply dilute the gum to make it weaker, but again, I don't know if doing that would cause other problems.

Or...if the lone remaining hinge manufacturer also makes mounts, the crappiness of their hinges may be by design, figuring they'll sell more mounts instead, which presumably would be more profitable. I certainly wouldn't rule out such a thing.