Supersafe Hinges Comments

You get what you pay for. Go with Dennison's if you want hinges.

Jack Kelley

There are hingeless mounts, but for a lot of collectors that's awfully expensive. And they shouldn't be necessary for used stamps. You aren't protecting the back of a used stamp, and you don't have any 'gum' to protect. Personally, I don't think used stamps look good in a mount. I like the look of stamps alone on the page.

So, a while back I did an 'experiment' to find the best hinges. I bought a pack of every currently available stamp hinge I could find, many from Europe, some from the U.S. and Canada (and maybe elsewhere), including hinges branded with dealer's names. I ended up with a dozen or more different brands, maybe more. I didn't realize that all of them are basically (or is it actually?) the same hinges made by one company, Prinz in Germany, and just packaged differently by different sellers.

So, thinking they were all different, I lightly glued ten (10) hinges from each packet to album pages, labeling them by brand. After a week so they had dried completely, I removed all them. I assumed some would do better than others.

But across every row of hinges, ALL brands were difficult to remove and all ripped the album pages. Although I did not mount stamps, I imagine they would have damaged stamps. Not a single hinge removed the way you'd want. On the other hand, they all held onto the album page just fine. I didn't experience any problems with hinges falling off the page. Maybe if I'd mounted stamps it would have been different, but I don't see why. The problem was that the hinges held onto the page too much -- like glue. In any case, I proved to my own satisfaction that hinges are not what they used to be.

It might be best, when you use modern hinges, to assume that whatever stamp you hinge will not allow the hinge to be easily removed later. Many older used stamps have remnants of older hinges stuck to their backs. This may continue when using newer hinges. Maybe you could soak them off (oh joy!), but I did not try that.

In a way it seems that with hinges we have come full circle from the early collecting days in the 19th century when collectors used tape, glue, or licked the back of mint stamps to mount them. Those stamps generally got destroyed especially when someone attempted to remove them. Today's hinged stamps may not be quite that bad. Let's hope not. It's hard to be a completely happy hinger nowadays.

Well, your comment is may be good for a 1970 stamp, but for old canceled stamps, the mount may save them, some are very brittle or already in bad condition because of previous hinges

In the early 20th century many collectors was using cheap mint stamps for hinges. They cut them in 3 and fold them and then use the stamp glue. I purchase few old albums with that system used.

For classic used stamps, it is very poor economy to skimp by using hinges. Not only are the stamps exposed to fingers, tongs, and other perils, but the abrasivesness of the facing page will wear and degrade the printed surface of the stamps.

This is a good indication that you're using too much moisture on the hinges. Modern hinges will never be as good as Dennisons, no matter how careful you are, but they will detach much more easily if you use a bare minimum of moisture. Modern hinges are not very forgiving in this regard, however, as there's a fine line between being permanently welded to the stamp and falling right off. The Goldilocks zone of adhering to the stamp but still being easy to detach is vanishingly small, but it does exist. There are also other tricks you can employ, such as putting a vertical crease or two in the hinge and then re-flattenging it prior to using. That way only portions of the hinge are attached to the stamp. I'm not pretending I get it right every time (I'm often too impatient and slobber on them in my haste), but you can even get modern hinges to detach from mint stamps with barely a trace if you do it just right.

I don't have problem with modern hinges, beside of the quantity of bad ones in a back, not for the cost but it's very annoying to pick up the bad ones, trash it and get a better one. And I don't know if I have bad luck, but 50% of hinges in pack a reject. And leaves the one you don't need in the pack or else they will curl.

"Personally, I don't think used stamps look good in a mount........." Really depends on the stamp. I have a very nice used copy of Mexico C61, Scott 2016 catalog of $1,800. I think that one goes in a mount rather than being hinged.

I ordered some clear mounts and going to try this for a collection with unused (in mounts) and used (some on hinges).

Amen, I do the same for any used stamp with a CV of more than around $10 or so. It's not just the hinge itself I'm worried about, it's also the aforementioned issues of the stamp being more susceptible to incidental damage while hinged. A mount provides a great deal more protection than a hinge does, regardless of how one feels about the back of the stamp.

Prinz states that all modern day hinges are manufactured by their company and all of the hinges no matter what brand are identical.

I cut my hinges in half diagonally. This gives each half the shape of a triangle. I attach the pointed end to the stamp. Because of the smaller surface area of the hinge on the stamp and the triangular shape, it tends to come off the stamp more easily without damaging it although sometimes a small amount of the hinge will remain. As a bonus I get 2000 hinges out of a 1000 packet.

An old "trick" with hinges was to cut them in half vertically to make them much smaller. That way they'd hold the stamp on the page just fine, but there'd be less damage to both stamp and album page when the hinge/stamp was removed. With large stamps this might not hold as well, but for most stamps it worked just fine.

Here's some thinking out loud:

One reason for hinges is so a collector can flip the stamp up to see either the catalogue number or other information under the stamp -- or look at the back of the stamp if that's necessary. I never do this. Also modern stamp mounts don't allow flipping stamps up. So if the "hinging" benefit of hinges is not used much, do stamps need hinging? Could they be glued to the album page instead?

Yes, the awful word "glue". At the dawn of stamp collecting, many stamps got glued to album pages. The result was awful as some glues soaked into stamps, destroying the stamp forever. Or the stamp was never removable from the page again. This gave glue a very bad reputation around stamps. Glue is now in the same league as scotch/cellophane tape which also ruins stamps badly.

But aren't there some modern glues that don't soak into paper and are easily removable? For example, isn't rubber cement designed to allow easy removal? Glue sticks may work similarly. I've never tried either of these on stamps, and I'm certainly NOT recommending them. But it would be interesting to experiment on cheap stamps. If a drop of removable glue would hold a stamp on the page, it would solve the problem of how to mount stamps without ruining the album page (or stamp) and help reduce the number of layers of paper on each page of the album by 1/3 -- page + stamp + hinge -- that makes album pages bulge so badly.

It's the long term effects that will haunt you.

There were hinges using rubber cement or something like it, probably originating in Germany since I've seen them used generally on German stamps, with a dark stain left on stamps over time.

That said, I've rediscovered Post-its used to indicate auction lot numbers on books from 30 years ago. No mark was left, the Post-its did not tear paper on removal and could even be re-used. I've found imitations leave staining or had the gum evaporate after a couple of years. Still, a 30 year lifetime is not enough.

For those who want to see the back of a stamp without leaving a hinge mark on the stamp is to hinge the stamp in a clear mount.

Jack Kelley