Stamps In A Non Smoking Collection

Growing up in London back in the late 1960's, there was a near-by (walking distance) dealer named John Lawson in Knightsbridge who I used to frequent as my collecting activities took off. Regardless of the time of day, whenever I walked into his shop, he would have a Schimmelpfennig Vada cigar lit which would hang out of his mouth as he brought his albums to the counter for me to peruse. We became good friends, and many of the early albums I bought and the stamps that go into them are left over from that era. One year I bought him a tin of Vadas for Christmas and he surprised me with my first Penny Black which of course I still have. I WISH these old albums still smelled of his cigar smoke...sometimes memories backed up by olfactory perceptions are the best...

Very nice evokative evocative story. Thank you for sharing.

I am also memory triggered by smells and sights and turns of phrase.

Docgfd/Puzzler

Highly Proustian. Recherche de Timbres Perdus, I suppose?

Geoff

Hi,
I am not sure what you meant, sorry.
French is not my first language at all.

Hi,
I've bought about 30 albums at auction over the last 4 years. Most were just fine odor wise. Some smelled faintly of age (musty). But the worst two smelled of mold/mildew. I even asked this forum how to get rid of the odors and tried all the suggested remedies, and nothing really worked. Finally I striped out the stamps and threw the pages away. I also had a couple that smelled of smoke. They were nowhere as bad as the "moldy ones", but I resold them (with full disclosure) as I cannot handle "smoke".

My worst experience with odor and stamps was an ebay kiloware lot of machins. It had a strong cat spray aroma. That is a "rechere" (remembrance of things past) in a different way. In contemporary parlance, it would be one of those 'things you can't unsmell'.

I bought a US collection maybe 20 years ago. The album had a sweet odor of pipe smoke and still has it. Never affected the stamps.

I have one Swiss stamp in my collection with small smoke stains on it that I literally bought at a "fire sale." The stains came from a fire that gutted a downtown office building in Indianapolis in November, 1973. The then-leading stamp store in the city; Premier Stamp and Coin; was on the 4th or 5th floor of that building. The stamp was in their large safe, which ended up in the basement. It was some time before the owner, now deceased, was able to retrieve what was left of his stock.

Puzzler

Apologies - a key element of Proust's novel, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, is the recovery of the past via sounds, smells and tastes.

Regards.

Geoff

GeoffHa, Thank you for the explanation. Neat idea. I do actually do that a bit I guess. I thought everyone did.

I'm also pretty much sickened by the smell of cigarette smoke, although oddly I don't find pipe or cigar smoke a problem. I'm guessing cigarette tobacco may have other chemicals in it that cigars and pipe tobacco don't have. The same goes for mold and mildew which is very nasty to smell. I've sent back a few items over the years because the pages or albums reeked of cigarette smoke. So I like seeing the words "from a non-smoking home" on albums. Not sure something as small as a stamp would make much difference, though.

As for mold/mildew, whenever I've ended up with an album or binder with this problem, I've found that leaving it outside in the sun on a hot day kills it off pretty well. Not sure I'd leave pages of stamps outside! But I've left binders and empty albums to cook in the sun, and it really does kills the mold/mildew smell. I suppose you could do it with stamps, too, but you'd need to be a lot more careful. And pray for no rain!

Apparently if you want to get the musty smell from clothes people have been using a couple of Vodka in he laundry..and then apparently let the air at it..Wonder what would happen if a person placed a drop of Vodka in a spray bottle and lightly sprayed the book/stamp..Might work.
Robert

I too love the smell of a pipe.

But back to the question.

I have found that an effective (and inexpensive) solution to smoke smell is to place the stamps (with air space as much as possible) in a sealed garbage bag containing kitty litter.

Eg. place the stamps loosely in a tray, layer the bottom of the bag with kitty liter, place the tray on top and seal the bag for a few days. If there are a lot of stamps, you can open the bag and move them around once in a while).

Smell will disappear and any excess moisture will be absorbed.

Ever since May 1, I have had the worst allergies of my life. I live in the Midwest, it just seems everyone has this. It seems to get better then its worse. I worry about having to miss the APS show in August. Anyone else suffering?