What Years To Soak Up To

I have many boxes of foreign material on paper. I am thinking, before I die, to get them soaked off and maybe put into my old 4 volume Harris Standard album.

My question is when is a cut off date to soak up to BEFORE they started using peel and stick stamps worldwide?

No since soaking if they are going to be destroyed in the process.

Any help appreciated.

Well, firstly, there are many, many worldwide self-adhesive stamps that soak off paper just fine. The self-adhesive stamps of most countries in Western Europe - Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Scandinavia, etc, - soak off with no problems whatsoever - even ones being used today. There are, however, many that aren't very soakable - Certain stamps of Ireland, the UK and Spain come to mind. Australia is difficult but they can usually be coaxed loose in water. There's not really a hard and fast date, but around the year 2000 or so seems to be when S/A stamps started to take off, and after 2005 or so their use was more or less the predominant (though not necessarily universal) type of adhesive in most countries. If you soak enough you'll kind of learn to spot the problem stamps ahead of time and use something else to get them off paper. The "problem" stamps are mostly confined to certain countries and you'll learn to look out for them.


I've soaked at least 15 pounds of kiloware in the past year, probably half or more of that (by weight) has been self adhesives. I bet if I pulled out all the non-soakable ones out of that, I'd have come up with no more than an ounce or two. Seriously, for most countries the type of gum or format isn't the issue it is with US stamps and they soak just fine. Again, there are certain countries with a lot of non-soakable stamps, and if you just happen to have a whole batch of them, you're experience will be totally different. But assuming that's not the case, I'd honestly just get busy soaking.

Thanks for the information Mr. Hinger. I've had similar experiences. I can add to watch out for added holographic foils on stamps, they don't soak well.

Thanks for the info, guess I will get my hands all shriveled soon.

I'd also add that recent stamps from Brazil don't soak off. Most recent France stamps will as well, but a few are difficult and/or take a long time to soak. I have had no issues with Japan stamps of any era. I haven't soaked every country out there, but of the ones I come across, it's just the self adhesives of the US, Ireland, UK, Spain and Brazil where I've run across stamps that won't come off in water at all. I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.