Question Re: Migratory Bird Hunting Stamps On Piece

Hello, I recently acquired a few U.S. migratory bird hunting stamps. Four of them are on piece (the hunting license). Here is a scan of the items...

I know that sometimes regular postage stamps are collected/preferred on piece as they document the history of it's postal use.
My question is "Are Migratory Bird Hunting stamps collected/preferred on piece?"

In my limited experience in collecting the migratory waterfowl stamps, there are two types of collectors: (1) those are interested in the artistic quality of the design and thus they want XF NH copies of the stamps and (2) those who are interested in usage as you suggest. At some point these stamps could also be used to pay the annual fee for admission to wildlife refuges and such use is very infrequently seen.
In my experience these two types of collectors are usually not the same person.

[First a note, postage stamps are collected on the entire envelope, tag or wrapper; if and only if one of those has been reduced, cut down, is the stamp "on piece."]

The paper license is not "on piece" if the entire license is there.

Those who want pretty, clean and perhaps NH unused copies will not collect used RW stamps which are defaced by an ink signature. For those who collect used, there are those who collect the used on licenses (as do I). Such items sell for more than just a used stamp price.

Of course the problem for many collectors who fill spaces, be it postage, special service or revenue stamps is that stamps with things attached don't neatly fit into a production album without added special pages. That is when soaking or selvage/plate number removal occurs.

Coming from a postal history perspective, used stamps are almost always worth more on their full mail piece rather than clipped to a "piece" or soaked. It follows that used revenue stamps are the same way. Full documents showing the revenue stamp use is worth more than the same pile of soaked stamps. You have duck stamps on full licenses. They are worth more than the corresponding soaked stamps, as parcelpostguy notes. Those stamps which have been folded are considered badly damaged and nearly worthless to collectors, with the only real remaining value coming from being on the entire license. I would leave them intact.

It just comes down to personal preference, there's no wrong or right way to collect them. Personally, I have only graded MNH examples. My hangup with collecting these on license is where does it end? Do you go for each issue for a single US state or go for all the states? They are certainly interesting on license/piece, lots of the stamps seem to have gotten damaged from being folded or having to be carried on-person when hunting.

OK, for my collection, I would prefer copies that are not on full license.
I would hate to soak them off if these are of interest to someone as is.
What is % increase over resale value of a stamp on full license vs individual stamp?
Would anyone be interested in a swap of some sort?

Since there is a wide variety of actual licences State by State, and used ones usually end up a ratty mess, it would be hard to have a nice uniform collection. Here is one decent example, but can I find 30 more like this? Forget it. Yours are worth keeping together as they are, since they are the same person, etc.

Do not removed these stamps from the licenses. At least two of the stamps have serious creases from where the license was folded. The other two may be faulty as well. Soaking the stamps off will result in faulty stamps that will be frowned upon by most collectors. Leaving them on the license makes them much more acceptable to collectors of licenses who are not all that concerned about faults but will appreciate the items for what they are.

Even if they were not creased, I cannot understand why anyone would want to soak a stamp off of a license, either philatelically or financially.