Throw Away Stamps?

Does anyone ever throw away stamps that are really damaged or so covered with ink that you can't read them?

Only if they are modern, post-1940, stamps and very reluctantly. I keep anything and everything from the 19th century.

Donald

Modern (post-war) material of which I have lots of duplicates, irrespective of condition, goes in a box for my local charity shop, as do stamps cut from incoming envelopes and knocked-about older stuff.

I destroy no-doubt-about-it trimmed fakes of U.S. revenue imperfs and part perfs I encounter. I don't want someone else down the line possibly getting duped. The only exception to that is if it is an item I save for my collection due to the cancel or plate variety.

Every now and then I encounter a travesty that just has me cursing a blue streak... like two $3 1st issue revenues with multiple strikes of Pacific Mail Steamship straight line cancels... that someone decided to turn into "imperfs" by trimming. Never mind that the Pacific Mail cancels don't exist on imperfs other than R88a (to my knowledge), but the R88a 'AMERICA' cancel is a completely different font and size from a different period. Furthermore, the stamps' ink colors are completely wrong for imperfs. The moron turned $150-200 stamps into items worth only a tiny fraction of that amount.

Grrr....

I toss away damaged stamps unless they have some redeeming feature, e.g. unusual cancel, rarity factor, etc. IU strongly believe that everybody is better off if we get rid of the stuff that shouldn't be collected.

Yes, I have learned to throw damaged stamps. I primarily buy covers these days, but when I get a box lot that includes stamps and misc. I almost always have something to toss. Tape stains, torn, over-inked, trimmed all get thrown. I threw an entire album with stamps glued down last fall that came from a club sale. I wondered how many collectors kept passing this on as they could not throw it. I looked to make sure there was nothing worth saving, but I actually took nothing from the album. I pulled one page out and tried a few things to loosen the glue and nothing worked. I was kind of proud of myself for actually tossing the whole album. It wasn't too long ago that I would have saved it for god knows why.

I go through a lot of common modern material and I bet I throw 100 stamps a week in the trash. I don't throw away faulty older material (assuming its not as common as dirt) and I'll sometimes keep or sell modern higher-value material with small faults. But a small corner crease on a Belgium King Baudouin series (or other extremely common stamp)? I don't even think twice about it. It goes directly in the garbage. There's 1000 more where that came from, no need to be saving faulty ones. I sell a lot of packets on ebay and I don't want a bunch of faulty stamps going out to paying customers, and I have no desire to hang on to a hoard of common faulty stamps.

Being new to this I didn't want to throw out anything that maybe should have been kept. I received some stamps in the mail from an ebay auction that were in really poor shape. (not you Artful Hinger)
Some were just all stuck together in a huge mess and others were 10-20 of the same stamp but so cancelled that they were hard to read.

If they're stuck together, you might be able to soak them apart and salvage them. The main thing is, if you still find them attractive, there's nothing wrong with saving them, even if there is some damage. But if you find it an ugly stamp due to the damage or the heavy cancellation, etc, there's no need to save it just for the sake of saving it. Assuming we're not talking about something rare or valuable, there is no shortage of cheap common stamps and there never will be, regardless of how many faulty ones we throw away.

Common ones yes. If the stamps have a high CV or is a key issue, then, and only then, will I keep them.

Chimo

Bujutsu

yes, I will throw away common stamps that are ugly or faulty, I don't care how old they are

Absolutely! but they must meet my criteria for doing so such as- modern, post 1930's in deplorable condition. Any classic era however I can overlook. I figure they been around this long so they earned their keep.

I destroy all obviously damaged stamps unless they are really rare. Damage includes tears, perf trims, thins or heavy scuff marks. I may keep slightly thinned stamps as space fillers but, if it's a stamp I want, I will look almost immediately for a replacement. I keep heavily postmarked stamps.

Damaged, minimum value stamps go straight to the recycle bin. Also, anything stored in the old "sticky" photo albums go straight to the trash.

All the post 1950 damaged and common get tossed. The rest go into the charity box. I put all the pre 1950 in another box. This includes the good, the bad and the ugly. I'm keeping a rough count and when I get to 100,000 I plan to sell the box on ebay. That's a few years away.

Rascal

I've been doing that with cigarette cards in poor condition. I now have a backache-inducing box of 15,000 that I'm about to put on ebay. I'll then find out if I should have put them in the paper recycling bag after all!

Ggeoff