Did I Mess Up Too Badly By Soaking Old Stamps?

Revenue stamp, Julie,
The Rev boys will probably give you more info...

Hi Rod, not sure what those are that you have there, the difference between those and the one I chopped in two is that the one I had said "Documentary" across the bottom where yours says "Proprietary" - yours sound more official because of it, but am not sure what they are - the denominations are sort of strange too.

Here is a link to one that sold on ebay that is like the one I had:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1898-US-10...AOSwh5hZmyPM

Thank you for your response. And then to round this thing out, mdroth asked a question that has been on my mind the entire time, here:



Here is the other stamp that I sliced, this one wasn't as bad as the last:

This one is a definitive of Great Britian SC# MH50 5p bluish lilac (a)
again, thank goodness, not worth anything. Amazing how these stamps are all worth nothing, it is like they were sorted into these piles because they were not worth anything - as if that were the main sort criteria as a matter of fact.

Ok, hopefully I will not make such huge mistakes going forward into the future. I am thinking it is all part of the learning curve that I have to go through, all in a day's work. :)

Hi Julie,
It does not appear to me that you have made any large mistakes, the stamps shown are not of great value. (You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet!). As you get more experience, you will probably find yourself 'pre-sorting' stamps that need soaking. Not only to remove any which might be on colored paper, but also any which have interesting cancels and/or are more valuable. I do not 'batch' soak more valuable stamps, they get special one-at-a-time attention. This applies to my handling, soak time, and drying.
If you find some that have interesting cancels, post images before soaking and get feedback to see if they might be better off not being soaked.
Don

Thank you so much Don:


Oops, it may be too late - I noticed some pre-cancels in the water that looked interesting, and reading other sections of this forum gave me the idea that some people collect those, and I soaked most of them off. I do have some town cancels, like "Paris" on a stamp from France, not sure if those are of interest or not - I actually have a few of these type.

I am thinking one day, far, far off in the mists of the future, I will purchase another old stamp album and break it down, I actually like doing it and find it interesting - just have to cut out the sloppy mistakes.

Thank you so very much for your feedback Don, it is valued and much appreciated, Julie

Julie,

One thing to watch for is using "Pure Citrus" to remove modern from their envelopes. Doing so is effective and does not ruin the stamp. But is does remove cancellations.

Jack Kelley

jkelley01938 said:




Not a chance of that happening here, don't have any of this stuff. I think I saw something about using this product to remove self-adhesive stamps from paper? I have not encountered any of those yet, except the other day when I attempted to save a stamp from the corner of an envelope - it was self adhesive so I wound up throwing away the stamp as I have no way of dealing with it right now. I should have saved it, it is kind of scary how I have gotten about stamps in just a couple of weeks

Thank you for your thought, Julie