Another Crystal Mount Disaster

Here is another example of Crystal mounts from the 60's or 70's. I picked up these two White Ace albums today, the plate block album has what appears to be Crystal mounts,the block of four album is hinged with what appears to be Dennison's. The plate blocks exhibit slight discoloration, the Freedom stamps are stained on the perfs, the Crane block is just slightly toned on the edge of the selvage, the picture does not show the toning, but it is present. At least 50% of the plate blocks that are in mounts have noticeable staining and as can be seen the White Ace plate block pages are worthless but the block of four pages are still very useable and the blocks of four are very presentable on the side that matters. So... low value hinged stamps are better that low value toned unhinged stamps.

Interesting. I keep hearing about the curse of Crystal Mounts. But I have to say that when I started collecting again two and a half years ago, the original part of my US and Canada collections, that I've since been building on, were mounted with Crystal Mounts. I even used up some that I had left, then I switched to the new mounts, because I couldn't find Crystals.
The old mounts are fine, no discolouration or shrinkage. The only problem I do encounter is some of the stamp fall out because they are in mounts slightly too big.
I guess I'll have to change them over eventually, but that's not a project I'm looking forward to.

Even more damaging were the bits of cellophane tape that some collectors used to keep the stamps from sliding out of their mounts.

I appraised a collection last year that apparently had "Crystal Mounts" some of those stamps were stained just like pictured by fredcdobbs. Some of the ends were taped shut and some. That really made me cringe. The ends were actually stapled with a little TOT stapler.