That Terriable Stamp Smell!

That Terriable Stamp Smell!


Late yesterday I opened one of the sealed kiloware large zip lock plastic bags and that musty smell hit my nose!

The kiloware was perfect about 4 weeks ago when we bagged it up.

My wife packed the lot that went out on Monday and she has told me she did smell that smell at the time.

I have a extremely strong sense of smell, my wife is more on the normal side of smelling things.

To me the kiloware is an issue to sell!

The smell is a bacteria that forms on stamps/ paper that are in a no oxygen environment plus have a temp that is in the mid to high 20's.

There is another sort of similar smell that grows in cold moist environments but can grow with or without oxygen.

It will take time but I can beat that smell. I have done a lot of experiments on this issue. It comes from the horticulture studies I have done and used in the work place.

If I leave the stamps for a couple of months to a year in a plastic tub and turn it every week the smell goes. I am trying to accelerate the process by using "Vanilla Essence". I half filled a plastic tub last night with stamps and placed the vanilla in a open plastic container on top of the stamps and then closed the large tub up with its lid.

The smell this morning was gone from the 1st 75mm layer of the stamps. I will now try putting a 50mm layer of stamp in a large plastic tub with the vanilla for 24hrs and see what happens but it is going to take some weeks before I truly know if it is going to work properly or not.

Something of possible interest! KGV

Interesting, KGV. Thanks for sharing.

Would Sodium bicarbonate/sodium hydrogen carbonate (NaHCO3) work too?

Sodium bicarbonate gets rid of smell in fridges, so it probably would work
Horamakhet

Yes bicarb is my next weapon.

Especially if I end up with vanilla flavoured stamps.

Why not have a go at this type of unpleasant stamping situation!

One time I received some stamps from an auction on ebay that did not pass the smell test. They were not very expensive but wanted to fill some holes in my collection. I ended up soaking them in a mold remediation product available here in the states let them dry and no more smell.

I would definitely vote for the bicarbonate of soda.

I have put stamps received from smokers in a sealed container with sodium bicarbonate for a few days and it did the trick.

And I've found that when baking soda doesn't do the trick, activated charcoal does.

Believe it or not, COFFEE may be the answer. I've used it and it works. Take a tablespoon or two of dry and unused coffee grounds and wrap them up in a handkerchief and fasten with a rubber band or a wire twisty thing (like on a bread wrapper). Place this "sack" of coffee in a container with a bunch of stamps, and it will (eventually) absorb the odor of almost anything. Drug smugglers use this to disguise or absorb the odor of marijuana shipments. It leaves the stamps smelling like coffee (that's not a bad odor anyway) but that will go away in time.