Cutting Out Stamps And "Centering" Issues

I have a full-time job, a wife, three kids, and two dogs. What spare time?

When I first started collecting stamps at the age of seven, I trimmed off all the perforations to make the stamps look neater. My uncle, who was a Serious Stamp Collector, soon put an end to that, and all of those trimmed stamps eventually went into the trash can.

Your instinct was right - it's the design that matters.

Oh, PPG I didn't know what you meant by "roulette". The term isn't in any of my books, like the Harris guide. Can they do roulette with non-self-adhesives?

On the "have you ever used a stamp?" question, well of course. But that's irrelevant. It hardly matters what people normally do when mailing a bill. I'm specifically asking about collectibles, not what people do in post offices. So I don't understand the attitude. That a person can tear a stamp off by hand doesn't really intersect with my question here. I'd much rather have a clean cut than casual tearing. But if the perforations aren't messy or asymmetric I probably wouldn't mind it too much.

Well, you do you, as long as you're prepared to all but eliminate resale value, and don't damage anything rare, valuable, or important and screw it up for everyone else in the hobby.

Your way is not the collector way.

People have tried square wheels too but it did not work out that well.

Letterpress - rouletting is another means of providing for the separation of stamps. If you look at the Finnish stamps shown earlier in the thread, you'll see that it was used a century before self-adhesive stamps came along in the 1960s.

Geoff, thanks, how do the roulettes stay attached? Here's the image PPG posted:


I'm also confused by the leftmost seam, where it looks like normal perforation, not roulette. The teeth aren't enmeshed like on the right – is it just a misalignment by the photographer?

How do they stay attached though? It looks a perfect solution to hanging chads if they somehow stay attached (through Van der Waals force? ).

I'm afraid I can't help you there. There are many types of rouletting. In general, it's a cruder way of preparing stamps for separation and can often lead to damage to the stamps - the Finnish stamps usually have missing teeth etc.

Nope, it's a strip of three and a single.

Typically, roulettes do not cut through for the full length they extend, but rather they periocally skip cutting every so often. That leaves very short segments at which the paper between stamps remains intact.

I think part of the issue here is when you tear stamps from neighbouring stamps, the perforations just nicely ensure you get the tear straight and central. The effect of cutting can be off-centre, so you have trimmed perfs or slighly diagonal. It then raises worries about the integrity of the stamp - is it really complete, and does it look 'normal'.

The main question has been answered - torn stamps are what is wanted.

I'm loathe to mention it but there are machine-cut booklets with cut edges to the perforated stamps. These should be recognised as such and are looked at a bit differently.

Below are two different used 3c Lincoln coil stamps, Scott 600. The left stamp is well-centered with cut perforations on both sides. The right stamp has been separated by "tearing" the perforations.

The left stamp has much better centering than the right stamp. Both stamps are fault-free. Both stamps have not been reperforated.

The stamp on the left has a much higher catalog valuation and would be priced higher due to centering. I believe most collectors would prefer the right stamp without the cut perforations (sure would be great if it had the centering of the left stamp...).

BTW, I don't know why, but even when rotating the image, it still posts as sideways! It looks right-side up as a file on my computer.

(Note: Moderator, if you know how to rotate this image, please try it on this image if you are willing!)

OK, here they are as right-side-up single images.