When You Are Tired - Dont Work On Your Stamps.

Hi guys...I was working on my Prince Edward Island Scott # 11 mint stamp last night and was trying to remove it from my 102b card, but being tired I had the corner of the stamp held by one hand and pulled it out and my thumb had the corner..See what happened.....

Been there, done that. Multiple times... usually when trying to remove a hinge from the back of a stamp.

AUGH!

Yikes! Sorry for your loss and I think I have done that before too so don't feel too bad about it..

Have learned this lesson the hard way too. Also don't drink coffee near your stamps!

Your post title says it all.

Look, part of the island is still floating!
Get a rope on it.

Some years ago I had a beautiful pair of Newfoundland #1 that I was examining when I dropped it and caught it in mid-air with the tongs. I ended up with a beautiful stamp and another cut in half by the tongs.

Yikes! So sorry for your loss. I've done similar things and end up kicking myself for the rest of the day. Don't you wish you could wave a magic wand and fix it? LOL Where's that darn stamp fairy godmother when you need her? LOL!

I have this pair of old, lethal tongs. They are incredibly aggressive in that they have a lightly textured tip which makes them very good at grasping old hinges. Of course I never use them with a dipped stamp but note the 'peg' between them. Once while tired, I grabbed them and was using them to handle a large amount of revenues... Sigh ... One of my nicer stamps now has a new perfectly punctured hole 'cancel' in it.
I really should throw these things away but they do come in handy every now and them.
Don

Been there and done that as well. In fact, only 2 days ago I ripped a stamp almost in half from the New Hebrides. Thankfully, it wasn't a high CV stamp, only $1.40 in my 2009 Scott's.

Like Don, I used the lethal tip tongs for a number of years. However, for the past 2 years or so, I have converted to the 'spade' type because of arthritis in my hands and wrists. I find that I can no longer pick up the stamps like I used to with them .

Chimo

Bujutsu

I remember a couple of years ago when one of my favourite ebay sellers had a similar mishap with a valuable stamp. He had been selling off his lovely Canada mint collection for months and I had won a few of his auctions. One day he listed a "wounded soldier" stamp. It was a Scott #116 10 cent plum Admiral stamp with a similar missing corner. He had also mishandled it while getting it scanned for the auction. That stamp was VFNH and worth $1,200! Yet he kept his sense of humour and listed it as a space filler complete with his sad story.

I would list this on ebay as the rare large square corner perf variety with a price of $95,000.

cjpalermo1964...not a bad idea.....If other people can do it, hey, maybe its time for me to make money...haha

cjpalermo - or the special issue commemorating the secession of the NE corner of the province, thwarted by an astute government that said if they leave there will be no Anne of Green Gables for them.

I find the lethal tip tongs far safer to use than the spade tips personally. I can never pick up the damned stamp with spade tip tongs and I end up struggling and invariably end up blunting perfs (or worse) in the process. The lethal tips do a much better job of getting the stamp on the first attempt.

New Rule: Pull your thumb out before you pull your tongs out.

Or wine.

RIP PEI #11. Wert, you will find another one.