Collecting New Self-Adhesive Stamps

When I was collection PNC5 strips, I would buy strips or rolls, depending on what the philatelic bureau was selling, and the remainder non-plate number strips I gave to my church to use on mailings. They thought I was a bit goofy but they did use the stamps!

Unitrade, page 16, left hand column, 3rd last paragraph discusses self-adhesive stamps.

Linn's World Stamp Almanac gives the following definitive of "mint":




[this was in their 1989 edition, which is generally before all of today's self-adhesive stamps started appearing; I am not aware of a newer edition.]

Definition of "unused":




The key words for 'mint' are "as issued". If a single self-adhesive stamp is moved or removed and placed on another piece of backing paper I would think everyone would agree that it is no longer "as issued".

I would argue that a self-adhesive stamp that has been moved from its original backing paper is now considered "unused" and is no longer a "mint" example.

stampquestion - Thanks for the Unitrade reference and your thoughtful commentary of the subject of single self-adhesive stamps.

My suggestion will work, although I concede that it is best to remove all surrounding stamps from the single booklet stamp that will be carefully cut out, thereby retaining the original backing paper and without disturbing the gum.

The backing paper does not do anything to the stamp. The potential long term danger to the stamp is the adhesive and that exists whether that stamp is on its original backing paper or moved to a new backing paper.




But you have disturbed the adhesive. It is somewhere between very difficult and impossible to move a self-adhesive stamp without making some kind of contact with the adhesive (=disturbing it) and even if you could manage to handle it only by the edges, every time you move it, it sticks a bit less well, and there is greater risk the adhesive will start drying out if any edge does not stay stuck down in place and this drying would likely migrate in towards the middle of the stamp.