Where Do 100+ Year NH Stamps Come From?

Perhaps I'm off on some of my assumptions here, but I wonder how any NH stamps that are 100+ years (or even 70 years old) survived. If it's 1920 I assume the norm is to keep your collection in albums and that your stamps are mounted with hinges. There are no hingeless albums yet. I don't even think people placed a premium on NH over previously hinged stamps. I know there's not a huge population of NH stamps from the 19th century (and thus the high prices compared to previously hinged). But how did any survive. Were they kept in drawers? Envelopes? They survived as old post office stock that wasn't destroyed? Perhaps some were resumed so expertly that it even passed the eyes of experts? Am I missing something?

An airbrush.

Don

As you mentioned, from desk drawers, folders, and large multiples.

or likely, many hundred-year-old stamps remained NH for their first year or so, then remained hinged in an album for ninety or ninety-five years, then might have been sent off to get altered/regummed (often in Germany, as several stamp publications unashamedly accept advertising for re-gummers) and the finicky but gullible NH collector completes the circle by paying a sometimes huge premium for seemingly undisturbed gum.

Checking perfs under ultra- high magnification for tell-tale signs of regumming should be standard, and dealers/sellers who pass off such fakery should be called out on it via feedback association complaints and word-of-mouth. Ignorance is no excuse!

Better yet, accept lightly hinged specimens or collect used stamps!

--Jim Wentzell
stampguyaps177-681

I have some plate blocks of older stamps...where only one stamp was hinged ...therefore leaving the rest of the stamps MNH.

Actually it is not that uncommon. I have quite a few 100 year old stamps with original gum never mounted including a block of 15 Scott 210's from 1883.

If I look at the Scott prices for NH from regular issues 1890/93 and until 1920s, there is not really a huge premium for NH, normally about 3x the normal price with hinge, so I would guess that most collectors have NH stamps from that regular issues in their collections, of course except for the higher denominations. But I also wondered about the question that howell has and thought at the beginning that they must be very rare, but it seems that they aren't. (and I hope that Scott does not make their prices including all those regummed stamps, anyway it would be interesting to see if there is a change in auction results for MNH stamps the last 30 years).

19th century stamp gum per ounce must be the most valuable item on earth.

I feel fortunate not to care about that aspect of the "hobby". I appreciate the rarity of a classic pristine stamp, but not planning on owning any, at least not on purpose.

The further back in time you go, the higher the likelihood that stamps will have been hinged. At least for the 19th century. If you look at earlier publications, such as the BIA journal, Meekel's and others, you'll find that the material of the early 20th century through the advent of the Roosevelt era is often listed as discounted because there was a lot out there.

This is borne out through modern times as I help widows of club members dispose of their collections and a lot of times I run into old time collections started in the 1940's and 1950's which have multiples of definitives, not plate blocks, which the collector had acquired. How did they get them? Probably through buying collections and accumulations and taking out what they wanted, then trading/selling what they didn't need.

There's just too much material available for it to have been mostly regummed. Any collector who has serious thoughts of working on material from the 1920 period back needs to spend the time to learn how to identify what genuine, never hinged gum looks like for each series and what expertly regummed stamps look like, so that they can at least make an informed purchase.

Are there artfully done regummed stamps in the market? Absolutely. As someone who does collect NH 20th century material, I hope I've educated myself enough to be able to catch a regummed stamp.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Crudely done regums are easy to spot. Really well done regumming (with airbrush and the correct gum) on very lightly hinged stamp are not easy to spot.
Don

My great Aunt worked in the post office in a small town in Nebraska in the late 1920s and early 1930's. When she heard that I was into stamp collecting, in the late 1970's, she sent me a pile of stamps that she had lying around the house. She thought they were worthless, and was thinking about just giving them to the neighborhood kids.

This was well into the NH craze. I open the envelope and out came a huge pile of mint Nebraska overprinted stamps, mostly in large blocks.There were a lot of national parks stamps too, including a complete set of plate-blocks. All were post-office fresh.They had spent 50 years in a desk drawer.

I was living in NYC and took them to Siegel Auction Galleries. Even then, we got over $1,000 for the lots.

That is how some NH stamps came on the market.

There were serious collectors in the days before hingeless mounts who kept their stamps never hinged. My grandfather was one. He specialized in air post had a large collection of never hinged. It was certainly unusual but not unheard of.

Assuming US, the first air post stamps would be the 1918 issues, which are quite common in MNH condition, even more so the later issues.

When a mommy stamp and a daddy stamp love each other very much...

With older U.S. material, I would think most of the genuine, surviving MNH material spent its early years in New England. Old paper from that area (even 1830's books and covers) can be amazingly fresh. The material that I see from the Southeastern states is almost always in bad shape, even with good (rag) paper.

Since the financial incentive is to "give collectors what they want", I agree with Don's original post. I think the airbrushes have been busy with 19th century stamps.

I inherited a collection that had quite a lot of worldwide never hinged material from the 1920s. The collector acquired most of this material in the early 1950s, but never got around (thankfully) to hinging any of it into albums. They just sat in glassine envelopes in an index card file box for decades until I got them in 2015.