Color Shades Of The 1851-57 3c Washington And H2o2

I soaked 1851-57 3c Washington in 3% H2O2 for 12 hours. It does not appear to be bleached out. It is still a normal color. I don't think there is any reason to ever do this except for science, but I have a little evidence that 3% H2O2 is not destructive to these stamps, even if you leave them in the solution longer than a minute or two.

The weakest link in this stamp is the paper, so I think we should be more concerned with that in a peroxide treatment. It is of very good quality in this issue, but go later in time and (say) an American Bank Note Co. paper and later papers are not. With a long soak as done in in this experiment, we don't want to be weakening paper for the long term, nor bleaching out the paper to an unnatural/unrealistic level (whatever that might be; hard to say after 150+ years).

That said, a 90 second bath every ten years or hopefully longer when/if needed is, I feel, preferable to the alternatives. Aside from not being able to identify a shade properly, if oxidation/sulfurization is left to continue long enough and it's no longer just barely on the surface, it seems to be impossible to remove well. Proper storage then means the stamp has to be excluded from aerosols produced by cooking and wood fires, and smog. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are around everywhere now and some are no doubt reducing agents that will cause discoloration; that definitely includes formadelhyde emitted from any furniture containing particle board. So you also might not want to keep windows open much at all with stamps just on a shelf somewhere. As always, your mileage may vary, but the more reactive the source chemical, the more discoloration over a period of years. Ten years seems too short for the discoloration shown, but we probably don't know how the stamp was stored.

So, the best current protection method for classic stamps would probably be slabbing/encapsulation (without expertization), a thing which still appears to be hated or at least disliked by many collectors at this point.

This is all very interesting. I did the H2O2 treatment to about 40 stamps. Every single one changed colors. About half changed colors just slightly - usually just brightening a little. The other half changed fairly drastically. The darker, rustier-looking stamps changed the most. All of the colors did not shift in the same direction. . .some got pinker, redder, oranger, etc. Most got lighter, but not all. The one thing that all of the color changes has in common was that they all become more vibrant. The clarets all got brighter, but stayed claret. Some of the yellowish colors went from more brownish to more orangish, but were still yellowish. The 1851 Orange Browns and EOB were already distinctive, but they got even more distinctive and pretty after the H2O2.

I have scans of every stamp before and after, though I was not careful about scanning under the same conditions for all the initial scans - some were scanned with a black background which darkens the scans. . .I'll be sure to scan on white backgrounds from now on. . .

3% hydrogen peroxide solution will not appreciably degrade paper mechanically.

Wert - "Why should stamps be any different..?"
Coins when they are minted do not have different shades, some stamps like the 3c ones being discussed here do come in different original shades.

Don
"Ultimately the question becomes; does the end justify the means? Are we tilting at windmills, chasing something that is clearly ephemeral."
That would depend on how long it takes before the color degrades again, and that depends on both the environment the stamp is kept in as well as the ink in question. While we all will have a different definition of quick and slow, if it happens too quickly it does seem pointless at best and risky at worst, but if it happens slow enough then it might make sense.

"'Ordinarily' implies that some stamps cannot be changed and/or do not readily change. This leads to the question of why? Are there differences between stamps in changeability? Or is it just that hydrogen peroxide is quite unstable after opening and becomes much less effective after the bottle has been opened for a while?"
Yes, the effect of hydrogen peroxide will vary in speed depending on what it is reacting with. And yes, hydrogen peroxide is not particularly stable and will break down over time, so a 3% bottle will turn into a 2% bottle over time (but not over just an hour). [one thing that is bad for hydrogen peroxide is light, hence the opaque brown bottle]

"Once you restore a classic car if will never again be an original car. Once you restore a stamp it will never again be an original stamp."
Even an "unrestored" car is not in original condition if it has been polished. I'm not sure if polishing physically removes a thin layer or if is causes a chemical change, but either way the paint is no longer exactly how it rolled off the assembly line.

Don
"Perhaps some stamp chemistries are more susceptible then others? I believe this is an electrochemical process, at a molecular level electrons are transferring. Perhaps some batches of ink have chemistries which facilitate this process more than others?"
Yes, some chemistries are more prone to sulphurization than others.

Do we have any professional inorganic chemists here?
What exactly is happening when the stamp sulphurizes? Is sulphur actually bonding with the ink, or is it just acting as a catalyst to change the oxidation state (electronic state) of the ink?
And then exactly what happens when we apply the hydrogen peroxide? Are we removing sulpur or just oxidation state (electronic state) of the ink again but in the opposite direction?
My real question is are we simply making a round trip where we end up exactly where we started before the suplhurization started (exactly being same elements with same chemical bonds) that can not be analytically be found to be different, or is there something different (in this case by different, I'm not counting an incomplete reversal due to not enough time or too thick a suphurized layer). If it is a complete round trip, then I have no problem with it.I thought the last time we discussed this someone suggested what the hydrogen peroxide was doing was converting the surface layer into a transparent layer letting the original color below show thru - if this I true, then we really are altering the ink and not restoring it.
All of this may already be known, otherwise it is something that the Institute for Analytical Philately should be able to easily answer.

"There's no reason to have to rinse a stamp after using hydrogen peroxide. It's essentially self-cleaning."
Only true if all the hydrogen peroxide has reacted - as I now see txstamp said.

hy-brasil = to your list I would add there are certain plastics including some commonly used in philately that are notorious suplhur emitters.

And it isn't just these 3c stamps. The oranges of C1 etc. are also very susceptible.

Hi eyeonwall,
In the car hobby the term 'original' means a car that was used for its intended purpose but has not been changed/restored. So while it is true that waxing a car or changing the oil means it is not exactly the same as it rolled off the assembly line, it is still considered an 'original' car.

So I was thinking that stamps are similar, a stamp might be used (cancelled) but it could still be considered as 'original' since it was used as intended and has not been restored.

So while I understand your point about waxing a car, it is like saying a stamp is not 'mint' once you separate it from the rest of a pane since it is not exactly like it was when it came off the perforator.

In retrospect, perhaps I obfuscated the thread with the collector car analogy and for that I apologize. My intent was to ask questions that lead folks to consider our diverse audience and to consider the possibility that there may be negative cumulative effects of repeated chemical treatments.
Don

Three pages of posts and no mention of prevention until @eyeonwall mentioned plastics commonly used in philately? A large lot of unused stamps stored in glassine envelopes for about 70 years had vibrant and fresh colors unlike stamps stored in common storage media like black approval cards. Stamps stored for long periods in some cards leave a faint impression of the design on the clear plastic front of the card. How can this be good for the stamp?

Living in urban areas where mobile sources emit oxides of sulfur or nitrogen in addition to tiny black particles may not explain the degradation of stamps stored in black plastic approval cards in tight plastic sleeves. I happen to live in a location with minimal air pollution and still see sulfurization of orange stamps stored in contact with rigid black plastic approval cards. On the other hand, stamps stored for 50+ years in Blue Ribbon (now Hawid) mounts appear fresh looking.

A serious study of mounts, by brand and era would be needed to fully document past, present and potential future damage to stamps. The message that this forum should leave is that proper storage (prevention) could be more effective than repeatedly treating stamps damaged by storage media or mounts.

here you find more information to the above mentioned problem.
https://www.bpp.de/de/Folienproblematik.html
(use Google translator)

As written there by the BPP, the problem or risk appears to exist mainly under hard PVC.

Clark,
The obvious issues with prevention is a lack or research. Our hobby is full of casual observations based upon a large number of unknowns. I have seen a number of stamps over the years stored in Crystal Mounts that showed no visible damage, yet a much large number that have. It seems to me that other variables were at play. While this is just speculation, the number of possible variables is considerable (mounting methods, stamp/gum type, light, humidity, temperature, atmospheric chemicals, etc.) and the research would need account for all of them.

One significant downside of the internet is that anyone can publish anything, factual or not. Gone are the days that you can count on what you read as being properly vetted. This community is not immune from this issue.

It is great when folks post their observations, opinions, and experiments. This allows others to try to replicate their findings and is the start of good vetting. But I wish folks would word their posts as in a way which did not make them sound as if they are stating proven facts.

A good example is the number of threads/posts where folks discuss using sheet protectors with album pages. In my opinion, this is still a very experimental method.

How many times can a stamp be soaked in typical chlorinated tap water before it begins to impact a stamp? 10 times? 50 times? 100 times?

How may times can we use peroxide before it impacts a stamp? And as the Philazilla touched upon, how long can it be exposed?

And few hobbyists are going to follow good scientific methods, what we see posted almost always falls under casual observations then a controlled experiments.

I agree that our hobby would be better served if there was more serious study.
Don

Good info from the Library of Congress regarding deterioration and preservation of paper which gives a great overview of paper types through time and factors that impact those papers:

https://www.loc.gov/preservation/ca...rochure.html