Philatelic Disasters

1) Putting mint stamps in a 102 card and then into a shirt pocket on a hot day. Then finding out that the gum on the stamps has stuck to the card ruining the stamps.

2) Opening a well taped large envelope from a seller that holds several stamp sheets in it only to get some of the tape on one of the sheets ruining it.

I have also opened envelopes by slittin at the top only to find that I have also slit one of the pages inside where the fold was. Ych.

Opening up the folded-over envelope inside my perfectly flat Fedex, only to find that the sender, when he folded the enclosure, also folded the cover that he was sending me.

I obviously have recourse, but I'm considering getting out the iron (he suggested it), as the fold maybe only partially broke the paper. We'll see...It was (still is) a 'really' nice one of a kind cover. Arggg.

Not me but the owner of one of the Jenny inverts found his missing copy in the vacuum cleaner.

The mailman folded my package with a unfolded sheet from the Vatican.
That ruined my entire month back in 2016.

Wayne Youngblood wrote an article in American Stamp Dealer & Collector about 6 months ago titled "Philatelic House of Horrors" giving a number of examples. One of his anecdotes involved acquiring a large box of covers. Those on the top of the stack were ordinary so he commenced soaking stamps off the covers. He got into a rhythm and did a couple of dozen of them. Only the next morning did he realize that he had unwittingly soaked off a pair of high-denomination Parcel Post stamps that cataloged at $300 on cover, but only $50 off cover. This was in the 1970s.

I bought a large box lot at auction, and had to carry it all home by hand, along with several other box lots, so I had to reduce weight somehow. I hate PHQ cards, so dumped the ones in the box in the bin. Only when I got home and checked the catalog did I find they were some of the first PHQ cards issued for GB, catalogued at up to £26 a set.

Now I hate PHQ cards even more!!!

I used to live in Taiwan, and that was a philatelic disaster -- hot and humid as anything. Mint stamps, CTOs, and even used stamps with any kind of hinge remnant or hinge glue would stick together, and everything was also subject to silverfish attacks. For some reason they had a particular eye for high values, or would just eat the gold off the embossed Queen's head, or other weird things. I developed a silverfish phobia.

The biggest PHILATELIC DISASTER was done by Scott Publishing Company . This effected thousands of collectors and has lasted over three generations of collectors . They also made no attempt to clean up this disaster and if you or me try to correct it for all other collectors they would slap us with a lawsuit and a cease and desist order .

What is it ???? They screwed up the SCOTT INTERNATIONAL ALBUMS and sold 10's of thousands of them and If you try to collect the world you end up having to buy aseperate set just to have your countries and back of the book items in sequences.....what a mess when you flip thru to mount stamps . BY FAR THE BIGGEST SCREW UP .

Do you think there would be savings in larger sets?

Had some duplicates of a better PNC in strips of 6. Being an odd length, I went to take them down to the conventional 5's. After removing the extra stamp. I lost my mind and removed an extra stamp from the other end too. Poof, there went about $45.

As confirmation of being a mere male, my folly was to soak Netherlands Indies.

Then there are the "monumental" fails..................

Sensitive souls, turn away now.

Australian philatelists will have heard about the International Stamp
Exhibition INDIA 80 held from January 25 to February 3, 1980 in
New Delhi.

Last year, when Mr. D.N. Jatia, President of the Philatelic Congress
of India and Vice-Chairman of INDIA 80 visited London to enlist
support for the show, he asked me also to send a collection for
display. I did, and I did not do too badly in the show. My collection
of Turkish postmarks won a Silver Medal.

Not so long ago the collection was returned to me, but when I tried to
get the sheets out of the exhibition envelopes I had the shock of my
life. The sheets were firmly stuck in the large envelope, and when I
finally got I them out I found they were all stuck together.
Thank God for the protective transparent covers I used. They saved
my stamps and covers, but almost all the album sheets were damaged
and torn. I soon discovered why.
The Indian organisers instead of using traditional methods simply
stuck the album sheets into the frames with the help of untested
double sided scotch tape. The sticky stuff adhered firmly, so that the
sheets had to be torn out and were damaged, and more damage was
done when they all stuck together in the envelopes. I know of at least
two other British collectors who experienced the same trouble, and I
presume Australian collectors who exhibited in India did not fare any
better.

Surely the organisers of an International Stamp Exhibition are aware
how much work and time it takes to prepare sheets for an exhibition.
It is most irresponsible to ruin all that work and cause so much
trouble to collectors. India, though, is not the only country where
unsuspecting collectors came to grief.

A typical case was the International Stamp Exhibition ARPHILA
held in Paris in 1975. The weather in Paris was fine, the sun was
beating down on the glass roof, and in the hall it was so hot that
one had difficulties in breathing. The organisers hurriedly brought in
yellow plastic sheets to cover the exposed exhibits, and finally they
dragged in long hoses and sprayed the floor covering with water. The
damage done to stamps was incredible. I saw mint stamps rolled up
into little sticks, large precious mint blocks splitting and
disintegrating, till there were just individual stamps left.

These experiences raise important questions. At present F.I.P. the
International Federation of Philately play a fairly passive role by just
giving their patronage to International Stamp Exhibitions. The time
has now come when F.I.P. should take an active part. In my opinion,
when F.I.P. gives its patronage to an International, it should also
delegate one of its board members from a different country to make
sure on the spot that everything is properly prepared for the show:
that the frames are of a satisfactory type, that exhibits are properly
mounted, that there is proper security, that the heat and humidity in
the hall can be regulated, that the organisers have taken out sufficient
insurance cover etc. F.I.P. owe it to world philately that the valuable
material saved over the past 140 years is not ruined by negligence.
Will the French do it asain?

Browsing SCF this morning,
6 eggs on slow heat for hard boiled, completely forgotten, until I heard the crackling.
Boiled dry...Ewww.

Wow. I guess there are a lot of ways to ruin stamps. Some of those above I never even thought of.

Jack Kelley

There are Canadian stamps that are imperf between, both vertically and horizontally. Example:

(not my stamps)

I was going through a collection and it took a few seconds to realize that what were supposed to be imperf between pairs were cut in the wrong direction. One wonders at what point (if ever) that that person realized that they were doing it wrong.