So Yesterday I Encountered A Type Of Stamp Hinge I've Never Seen Before.

Hi all,

Last night I was working at dismantling a nice collection in about a dozen Harris albums I picked up cheap at auction a couple of months ago. The album pages were supplemented all the way up to 2004 issues, so this collection was being added to relatively recently. Mostly postally used issues and hinge mounted; I think this fellow was a kiloware warrior. The attraction here was the tens of thousands of different post-1980 stamps -- quite helpful, as often collections that you buy get real thin on the modern issues (expensive to buy as new issues mint and a challenge to find postally used).

Now, over the past 20 years I've assimilated many collections into mine, so I'm no stranger to old stamp hinges. I know well the wonderful Dennison hinges, translucent emerald, that pull away like angel kisses, and the slightly less gentle but equally green Fold-O-Hinge, the modern yellow Prinz types that sometimes peel and sometimes leave a remnant and sometimes just pop off (I've never been able to predict what a particular one will do), the home-made jobs constructed out of stray bits of gummed selvege, and the century-old brown 'peelable' things, made to stick with globs of horse mucilage or some other ungodly glue, rounded at the corner and never pre-folded, that will never peel no matter what you do, and might not even soak off the stamp.

But one of the albums had a type of hinge I had not encountered before.

These hinges were clear (not yellow or greenish), had the appearance of Scotch tape, and were tacky to the touch, again much like Scotch tape. However I know they were not Scotch tape; Scotch tape does not peel from stamps, especially after years of pressure closed up in an album. This stuff, however, peeled evenly and easily, like an old Dennison hinge or a Post-It note. A few of the stamps affixed with these strange hinges were unused; these exhibited no marks on the gum. A tiny bit of residue visible under UV light was the only evidence the stamps had been previously hinged. I was fairly impressed.

I've only found a few of these, and I think the collector folded these hinges himself (the folds were uneven and sometimes crooked), so is this perhaps some kind of gentle hobby tape that the collector found and used to make homemade hinges? Any idea what it might have been? If it is some kind of tape, I doubt they are suitable for long term use (wouldn't be surprised if that tacky stuff yellows given enough time), but I thought it was interesting, and wondered if anyone else had seen such a thing?

Welcome to the forum codehappy and kudos on scoring a great collection. How many stamps do you estimate were in the collection? I'm wondering how far one could go with Harris Supplements. I agree that the 1980's-90's are a pain to find used at reasonable prices. I really like the term "kiloware warrior" There are many such warriors here on the forum, myself included.

as for the mystery hinges...

Almost sounds like a kind of post it note tape. Or possibly something from the scrapboooking craze. A collector in my club uses post it note snippets to identify stamps and it seems to be pretty peelable. Not sure about long term exposure.

The most interesting hinges I've run across are ones with advertising printed on the hinge.

Harris albums, off-the-shelf, have poor coverage of, well, everything, but they've issued yearly supplements with spaces for new issues for a long time. The coverage in those supplemental pages (for a given year) isn't actually bad, though they have several other drawbacks: jamming a lot of stamps per page, printing on both sides of the page, treating most se-tenant or miniature sheet issues as sets of singles, and smaller countries get updated on a staggered schedule over a few years. This collector evidently bought those supplements for a long time (that's how he filled a dozen binders!)

It's still not a good format -- I would think somebody spending the money on supplements every year would have moved to better albums -- but for a collection like this it worked OK, I guess. He put glassine interleaving in between full pages (proving printing on both sides of the page does not actually save shelf space), and there are a lot of full pages.




Some are tough at any price -- many recent stamps aren't stocked by dealers and do not turn up in circuit books, ebay, etc. with any regularity. Sometimes it's even hard mint! I've done well buying in collections and large lots, and the occasional kiloware has proven worthwhile, but I'm sure in many cases there will be that one oddly scarce set that just doesn't turn up.




I freely admit I love the stuff myself. I let my nieces rummage through a 20 pound box of mixed on paper I keep in the solarium. They don't make a mess very often -- at least, not a big mess. Sometimes they pick stamps they like and we have to soak them off paper.

If they don't turn into stamp collectors, they might at least think fondly of stamp collecting.

If it is leaving some removable residue, I'm guessing it is likely an older Scotch 811 removable tape. 3M has tens of thousands of different types of adhesives (most of them for special research/industrial purposes), and the 811 is NOT anything close to what is on the other tapes they sell to consumers. As far as I know, by the time 811 was available to consumers, the formulation was changed from the very earliest Post-It note adhesives (those, would in fact, brown out and lose "removable adhesive" qualities over a period of years).

I, and a few other collectors have been testing 811 for almost 10 years. The only problems encountered were removable residue (on the earlier tapes), transfer of finger oil if you use your bare hands and you have oily skin, and more importantly -- do not use them on older stamps printed on soft porous paper (it will remove some paper fibers when peeling, but it won't go as far as causing a thin).

The underlying assumption is that the collection will be stored properly (i.e., vertically, room-temperature...). We've not experienced any of the yellowing/browning problems associated with the earlier Post-It note formulations of the 1970s-1990s. (I've been a moderate user of office supplies over the decades). So I assumed they changed something once they made the 811 available to consumers. They must have also done some other adjustment in the few years soon after it was first sold to the general public.

We'll continue to check and see what happens over the next decade (hopefully, we'll live that long). But so far, the bottom line is, if you must/prefer to use hinges, the 811 is definitely no worse than the best hinge that is currently on (or has been in the past) the market. And, in my opinion, is possibly a superior alternative to conventional hinges (especially on mint stamps) since you don't have to "wet" anything. This is not a recommendation, just my/our observations so far.

People have been using similar (not identical) products from 3M for scrapbooking and photography for decades without any problems other than the earliest adhesive discoloration problems I mentioned. I guess we'll find out how this works out in the long run on these test stamps... (just remember, don't use them on soft porous paper unless you're willing to lose a few fibers when peeling; although that will happen with Dennisons as well -- you just don't notice because Dennison hinges are not clear like the 811).

Many collectors / dealers in the past cut up glassInes for hinges