Stamp Encapsulation In "Slabs"

Just thought i'd run this by you stamp guys, over on the Coin Community Forum we were having a discussion about stamp encapsulation in TPG slabs. Come take a look!
http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/...3080#2040075

ps. My CCF username is ChildOfTheWheat, if you were wondering.

Ok I posted as someone who has done stamps and coins both for over 40 years now.

Stamps in bits of plastic? Cheap, vulgar, tacky - choose your adjective! Strictly for novelty key-rings.

The thread on coins and slabs surfaced some possible parallels and differences between coins and stamps. Over time many high quality and high value coins have moved into slabs, but some numismatists pull coins out of slabs after buying a grade. For most stamps slabs aren't needed, but for some stamps and some custodians they can be pretty wise.

As an example, check out this stamp image and description credit to Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries Power Search.



This 244 condition rarity damaged after the grading lost about $3000 in value as a result of the birthed crease (SMQ for 95 $6600 stamp realized only $3700). That is a big dollar loss for an accidental paper bend. Did the stamp slip going into or out of an album mount? Who knows! Bottom line, faulty stamps are extant, and all faulty stamps use to be sound and therefore more valuable. It is the loss of preservation that drives a loss in value.

Granted it is just one example, but some could argue this stamp would clearly have been better off in a protective slab.

Those who act as historical custodians of very high quality and/or very high value stamps may choose to slab stamps as a prudent measure of preservation and financial protection. I think right now slabs are out of favor, but over the next 20-30 years a dichotomy for stamps will develop as happened with coins. Most examples of 244 being a collectible and very nice grade probably wont be slabbed. Those examples that are very high value such as never hinged and/or highly graded numerically will end up permanently housed and traded in slabs.

"Historical custodians"? I can certainly see your prediction coming true for stamp "investors". But probably not for stamp collectors.

Not a fan. Just seems wrong to imprison a postage stamp in a slab of plastic, no matter what its quality or -grade-. It also dramatically reduces the ability of collectors to get -up close- to their stamps to admire engraving detail or determine varieties in printing, perforation or watermark, instead leaving these basic collecting skills in the hands of the -conservators- who make the decision before an item is slabbed. If new information about varieties on an issue ever appear after the stamp has been slabbed, determining whether or not the slabbed stamp is affected by the new variety information becomes much, much harder. (No, probably not an issue for a commemorative stamp such as the 1893 Columbians, but new discoveries in older definitive issues in particular are being made all the time).

Is this the first official CCF-SCF crossover thread? If not, it is certainly my first post here.


I agree. Not a fan of slabs for coins or stamps. My stamps are in an old Harris album from the early 1980s. I may not be active in stamps these days, but I still enjoy them this way.

For me, it transforms the stamp into a fungible commodity to be traded, rather than a collectible to be admired. I don't want to treat my stamps like the gold bars in the cellar of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, in which transactions occur by sliding a bar from one marked space to another. I prefer to remove them from mount from time to time, turn them over, inspect with a loupe, admire and study.

That's as much an advertisement for careful handling and/or not paying through the nose for condition rarities as it is for the slabbing of stamps. The "protection factor" is about the only thing I can see in slabbing's favor as in nearly all other respects it detracts from the presentation and overall ease of storage. By all means, if a collector likes and prefers their stamps to be slabbed, buy slabbed stamps and/or get the slabbed by an expert service. It's unlikely the majority of collectors will follow suit anytime soon, though.

I insist that my stamps are placed in albums of rare, Corinthian leather. Anything less is tacky. (Wink.)

Picturing KGB channeling the late Ricardo Montalban as he said that