UV Light Uses?

i am rather new to stamp collecting been gathering them for years and just now really sitting down since I have a bit of time now to try to make heads or tails out of them, I ordered a uv lite, but have forgotten why? what is it I am to see when I view the stamp under it?

thank you
jeannie

*** Edited by Staff to clarify topic title. Titles are important! ***

A UV light is used to see if a stamp is "tagged" or not. You can learn more about "tagging" here:

http://www.ebay.com/gds/Guide-to-US...58564/g.html

kewl, now I have yet another dumb question , does the type of tagging affect the pricing of the stamp? I am so new to this hopefully I will catch on soon.

There are no dumb questions. Occasionally there might be dumb answers. :-)

What kind of UV light did you order? There are two popular types (shortwave & longwave; there are also "dual" lamps that have both long- and shortwave.) There's also a "midwave" (UV-B) lamp, but that's more useful for other hobbies. Depending on what you ordered, you may or may not be able to see US tagging with the lamp. Generally speaking, for USA stamps:

Shortwave UV (UV-C, typically 254mm): will reveal tagging (phosphorescence)
Longwave UV (UV-A, typically 365mm): will reveal paper brighteners (fluorescence), faults/repairs, removed pen cancels

Almost none of the battery-powered (portable) lamps are strong enough to detect subtle things (like expertly removed cancels,) so I usually recommend that serious philatelists bite the bullet and buy a more expensive/powerful model (I use an old dual-band Raytech LS-88 myself.)

The type of tagging itself will not affect value. However, sometimes stamps get issued without the intended tagging, and those errors can enhance the value of a stamp.

I ordered a portable UV but I see I will be making upgrades in the near future, thank you so much for these helpful words, in just a day or so I have started learning more about stamps by reading the post and seeing the scans,, and if I get to bugging you to much just tell me to hush up and drink my sweet tea,,LOL

UV lamps also have their uses in color identification for some issues from some countries. There are a number of articles spread throughout the literature about this. The subject is rather complicated and I recommend checking for articles related to your specialties.

"The type of tagging itself will not affect value. However, sometimes stamps get issued without the intended tagging, and those errors can enhance the value of a stamp."

That's not true a well know exemple in Canada ; Canada 522i as a value of $ 40 and the 522ii ( tagged ) $ 200 and you have a place on the Lighthouse album for it