Beware: Disturbed Gum!

Like so many, here, I come from the pre MNH/MUH craze when using hinges was the norm (and we had far better hinges) and penciling in the catalog numbers on the backs of stamps was an accepted practice (though I never did the latter).

Then came mounts, a money-making gimmick -- including a few suicide varieties such as Harris' Crystal Mounts -- and as Herman Herst Jr. said, original gum became the most expensive commodity on the planet.

But lately I have been hearing a new term:

DISTURBED GUM!

Now that sounds dangerous.

There is no telling what DISTURBED GUM might do.

Do you have nightmares about it?

Could it be stalking you?

Should it be institutionalized for safety's sake lest we have another mass shooting?

BEWARE: DISTURBED GUM!

This is anything but new. My 2004 Scott Specialized catalogue of US stamps here in my office clearly defines disturbed gum.

How far back the term goes? I don't know. But the NH "Craze" goes back at least to when I first started collecting in 1980. Although not officially catalogued, NH stamps commanded a premium then, as they do now.

This "craze" is here to stay ...

Brian

I used the term "disturbed gum" today in my latest sales listing, "The Stamp Cafeteria #2."

I used to care about NH until I realized that a well centered stamp looks much nicer than an off center with no hinge mark in an album. So my premium goes to that instead. I agree it is a silly trend.

Actually the MNH craze goes back to about the mid 1960's.

Watch out for low flying craft.

Zombie gum is much worse than disturbed gum, at least with disturbed gum there is a chance of acceptance.

YES! Someone caught on.

Now we just need Scott to describe zombie gum for us.

MNH does go back to at least the late 1960s, probably much earlier. To me, it's a little silly! No-one wants to buy a stamp that has a really ugly back but, is it necessary to have a pristine side to the stamp that no-one ever looks at once mounted in an album? The pricing differential is really noticeable in Canada's classics, but would you really want to pay a huge premium for a MNH copy of the "Bluenose" compared to a perfectly centered fresh MLH copy. I wouldn't. Today, I bought the 20 cent 1908 Quebec Tercentenary; looks like one of the best-centered copies of this stamp I've seen and, although it wasn't cheap, it will be in my collection whereas a MNH copy was probably out-of-reach.

"Disturbed gum", however, is a term that scares me off. Could mean that a lot of the gum has disappeared. If so, the question arises as to how rich the price! Is it really mint or is it an uncancelled used stamp that has been imperfectly soaked? Does it have thins that have not been noted?

Modern_who. I find your comment to be very humorous. I too would tend to be wary of "disturbed" gum.

That said, on a serious note, I am not hung up on gum. If you think about it, no good can come from gum on the back of a stamp. It can be affected by humidity, it can stick to other stamps, it can stick to an album page.

"Disturbed" gum is , IMHO, one of two things... stamps got moist and the gum shifted, like if the stamp was vertical..
or there may have been a hinge and the hinge was lifted but the gum was spread around to cover the stamp.

In my buyers mind, disturbed gum means the same as partly OG

I'm confused. Was there a pop-culture or movie reference I missed?

Rohumpy, I have read that some museums soak gum off the stamps to help preserver them. But it is only hearsay, as far as I'm concerned.

Does anyone have any information on this?

Rileysan, it wasn't so much of a pop culture reference as a cultural reference.

Have you ever seen the old movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

In it, Jack Nicholson was a disturbed individual.

(And he didn't chew gum.)