Nice Mint Stamps Without Gum

I happen to be looking right now at a German SW Africa SC:#8. Not a big dollar stamp by any stretch. It is one of many that recently showed up at my door, we just won't tell my wife how. Anyway - This would easily grade VF - XF but it has no gum. Are these instances where a mint stamp was hinged and had the gum soaked off in a poor effort to pass as MNH? There did not appear to be anything in Scott about produced with or without gum. I presume if originally with gum and now without it needs to be graded as used even though un-canceled? There at least 20 of these so far in this acquisition.
Thanks all.
Paul


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These stamps were issued with gum. They are likely from a collection which had been poorly hinged so that the stamps stuck to the album pages.

If they actually made it to the Colonies, they may well have had the gum soaked off by a collector there to avoid damage to the remainder of the stamp.

They are considered "Unused" (some would call them mint, no gum, but having no gum some refuse to call them mint anymore, so Unused is the best term). As such they will be valued at a fraction of mint hinged. For mearly US, yo can find no gum values in Scott - I vaguely think they are around 1/3 of mint hinged - BUT that fraction could easily be different for German SW Africa. Perhaps the Scott Classic provides no gum values??? (I know it does for some non-US countries like France).

No. It shows mint hinged and never-hinged, but not w/o gum. Nor does the Michel Specialized catalog. I would consider it worth a fraction of the hinged value.

Thanks all. I am entering them at 25% of MH value in EZStamp. Not real concerned about the value other than insurance purposes.

I can't see how anybody could associate a gum removed stamp as "mint". Paul, could you let us know this stamp's final disposition? I doubt you will receive 75% of its MN value but I could be wrong. Please let us know.

Jack Kelley

This is an interesting debate.

first, some german stamps are recommended to soak because the gum will ruin the stamp (only a few and not this) 2nd stamps sent to, and used, on colonies were often "due to humidity on the trip stuck together and had to be soaked to be regummed or sold as ungummed for the customer to glue it on.
this is known on many danish west indies stamps.

NO!, you can't soak hinges off to make a stamp appear MNH it would have to have orginal gum for this to be the case.
a stamp with original gum and hinge remains or even the slightest flaw in the gum will be MH or unused with original gum I think.


but here's the interesting part.

ideally we would collect cancelled stamps because that is how stamps are supposed to end up, if used for the originally intended purpose.

if we for some reason collect them without cancels I can only assume we collect them either because of the intricate design, the beauty of the motive or technique needed to make it?

why do we even care how a stamp, that for whatever reason hasn't recieved a cancel, looks like on the other side?

a friend made an interesting point.

a cancelled stamp has fullfilled it's purpose, it's made a trip, it has a story to tell (if on a cover) it's interesting.
an unused(hinged) stamp has been bought by a collector who cherished it enough to put a hinge on it and placed in a collection.

a MNH stamp must have been so uninteresting that noone needed it for a letter, noone ever found it interesting enough to lick on a hinge and place it in a collection.

i find this to be a very well reflected view and the more I think about it the more I agree.

and I too believe that hysteria regarding gum on a stamp is just another sign that there are too few collectors in the world and a sort of snobbish attitude towards getting the top of the lot.

a well centered clean white paper with all the perfs sitting in a collection brings joy because of it's beauty.. the backside just brings a couple of extra bucks when sold.


just some thoughts to reflect on and no punts intended.

Hear, hear!

Sorsh - I could not agree more!
I'm getting more and more focused on the postmarks rather than the reverse. The postmark set the stamp into a historical context, unlike unused 'stickers'.

Very simple, if you want a stamp to appreciate the fine details of the engraving, you get a mint. If you want something historical, or want to study cancel you get a cover. What is the purpose to have a stamp with a partial cancel on it ? beside than most of the time a cheaper way to fill spaces

I collect the fronts of stamps. Except for those circumstances where I collect the backs of the stamps (Latvia, Russia, control numbers, etc.). I pay little attention to the back side of most stamps. Gum disturbances and hinge remnants don't give me much pause, as long as no significant thinning is in evidence.

That being said, "no gum" is awfully common on stamps that have other issues. If there is a stamp that can have a premium for some feature, like an overprint variation, and it is "no gum" my spidey sense is tingling, as the lack of gum can hide a multitude of problems. I usually prefer to find variations rather than pay for them, but I would never pay for the premium of a variation on a "no gum" stamp.

Now, as for used stamps versus covers, I often say I search out the most postal history I can possibly find on the face of a stamp. If it has to be on a small cutout, so be it, but I'm not often interested in full covers. There are some markings that interest me that will almost never have made their way onto a stamp, and for those I might grab a cover, but if it feels like it could appear on a stamp, I'll keep looking for it.

Pretty sure there is no one way to do this. But that's how I approach it.

Cjd , I also collect the front of the stamps, I found the gum to be a problem more than other thing.

I don't even know why we are talking about used stamps in this topic, probably 95% of my stamps are used but for the stamps I really like, I prefer them mints. Of course when you collect Austrian's stamps that have been used in Hungary, you need the cancel ( and an expensive book to ID them, lol ) , same case for some early Filipino's stamps. On some stationary , you will need the full cover to ID the stamps, as some differences are in the knife style of the envelope. Some US stamps are way more easy to ID, if you have the # printed on the margin.

By the way look at my avatar , those revenue stamps look way better with the hand made scripted cancel

I would agree with member sorsh - up to a point. For the 'larger' countries, used are to be preferred. However, for many of the Indian States that I collect, used are difficult to find, and covers more so.

Why collect on cover at all? Well, for one thing, a cover can prove that a stamp was actually used. This set from Charkhari State (in what was once Central India)



(SG 45, 46)

was dumped mint and CTO on the market at below face value. The set was withdrawn and replaced by a rather less exciting set



(SG 39, 41b

Covers - which demonstrate actual use - from Charkhari State are still something of a rarity, given that the stamps were only valid within the State, and the very small number of people who could read and write.

As to gum, well, why bother when the post office provided a glue pot?



(SG 31c)

I've given examples here from Charkhari State, but I could equally have done so from any number of other states: Alwar, Bamra, Barwani, Bussahir, Dhar, Duttia ... and you get the idea.

The most common areas in denmark are MNH, and SOTN cancels.

almost everyone only want perfect cancels, and some of those are quite staged, in terms of someone asking the postoffice to create a perfect cancel which in my book is worthless.

i want stamps good centered and no faults - cancelled with crystal clear cancels, and I need to see the town, the date and year. but I do not care if they are sideways or perfect - these are for me stamps used for their intended purpose and not just something manufactured for a collector.

as stamp collecting got popular, and endless stream of stamps where made to drain collectors for money, so I only collect these stamps with a certain type of cancel, a machine cancel, so I know for sure that they have travelled on a letter.

and since everyone collects only perfect cancels, I have endless supply of beautyful stamps at almost no cost.

regarding mint and unused, the same pattern exist in Denmark, noone wants unused, only mint. there is an endless supply of unused at hardly any cost, except of course the really early ones that are virtually impossible to get mint.

i really find it silly, since my logic tells me there is only 1 purpose of collecting mint stamps and that is to see the actual stamp as it is without the "tarnish" of a cancel - so why would the backside matter.

even in the case of hinges, a hinged WITH gum is worth alot more than a stamp with no gum on... and that is just plain stupid since a heavy hinge, a dirty stamp would present itself much better if the miscoloring and hinges were soaked off in water.

and I too become increasingly interested in postal history, old letters with faultless stamps with beautiful handwriting and clean cancels is what I hunt. preferrably with contents.

but holy .... these are expensive.

Here an exemple of the saving you can fo when you don't care about the back

I don't know but the one at bottom will look as good as the one on top in an album no ? If we don't look at the color, but in this exemple the color of the on on bottom don't seem right, probably a scan calibration.