The Biggest Mistake? Or May I Do What I Want?

Hello All
A conundrum...I like using Elmers Paste stick to actually glue stamps in my album. Yes I know it makes a mint a non mint and I am not doing this with any stamps that are considered Valuable( In a monetary sense anyway) I have used this method for about 20 stamps and damn if they dont look awesome on my Mystic Heirloom pages!! I never plan to sell my collection either. Am I commiting a heresy in the stamp world ...or can I do what I want to do?

When I get collections like this, I toss them in the trash.

Your collection, do what you want. Will make them less desirable than hinges, but still better than scotch taping them in.

If you wanted to replace a stamp, would you rip off the old one (and hope you didn't ruin the underlying album page in the process) or just glue the new one on top of the old one? If you did have a valuable stamp, how would you mount it differently if the glue is reserved for the low/no value stuff?

I'm not sure I see the value in what you are proposing. Not that I'm trying to discourage you from ruining a bunch of stamps, but why not just save the cost of the album and glue your stamps to plain paper or use a sticky photo album?

In the end, it might be more satisfying to tear them into tiny pieces and toss them in the air like so much confetti.

Dale

I recommend to not stick them on the pages even tough you don't plan to sell the collection.
Use plastic protectors like Hawid [1] instead.

[1] https://www.lighthouse.us/collect-s...trips/hawid/

Well if I had a known valuable stamp I would properly mount it to not damage it. However-- I seems what I have been collecting( US Commemerative 1932 to 1999) most are not really worth too much or will ever be way past my lifetime. That said it begs a bit of a question- Am I a "Investment" collector or someone who just likes my little collection of things that interest me. I am most definately in the second catorgory

Firstly, you can do absolutely anything that you want with how you handle your collection. That being said you are the first collector I have known of anything that deliberately damages their collectibles. They even will be less desirable to sell as face postage down the road. You could argue that car collectors deliberately damage things whenever they make changes, but a stamp is a very basic non-mechanical item.

What if you were unaware that a "common" stamp you glue-sticked to a page had an error that made it worth $1000, and you devalued it by gluing it? Would it be worth the extra time and really no extra money to have mounted it properly?

Keep in mind that what may not seem valuable today may be in the future. When I first started I had some stamps at that time were considered worthless & everyone was putting them in the trash. They were unusual so I kept them in a box just because they were different. I recently dug them out & because so many were trashed they suddenly became very valuable. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

Personally I don't think pasting is nearly as visually pleasing as other methods but I did quickly give up on using the plastic clear mounts on everything but valuable. Seemed a little silly spending 3-10 cents to protect a stamp worth nothing unless you can find someone who needs one. Hinges are cheap and you will have a much better looking display.

Bottom line it's your collection. If it pleases you that's what is important. Enjoy the hobby.

One day, I thought about the outrageously high price of proper stamp supplies...

Then it hit me that the best way to collect might be to image my stamps, and then burn them. I could always stick the image onto an image of the album page and be done with it.

Then I realized that I didn't need to limit it to my stamps, or physical stamps at all. I could just steal other people's images, and possess them myself. I could put together an image of other people's images and print it out, in place of an album page. Or, just share the image online, and pretend like I actually have the stamps in question.

The possibilities are endless!



John

I think most members of this forum would say the answer to both questions is yes.

Bostonguy, you imply you are mounting mint stamps. In that case you can save the glue stick and use the gum on the back of the stamps. Otherwise, just carry on.

My grandmother, which was using tape to put her own stamps in her collection, didn't know that, a lot of years later, when I would look at her collection, would be now completely ruined because of the tape. After all these years, it was still enormously sticky, and there was some big yellowed spots on the back of the stamp that we can even see well on the front. There was even some stamps with the paper extremly thinned in the place there was the tape. I don't know what it could make a few years later if you put glue in the back of some of your stamps.


So I think that it would be a better idea to listen to the experts here, but you can do what you want with your collection.

Well, I'm probably in the minority on this one, but one of the things I love about stamps is the previous and prospective lives they have had/will have separate from their time with me. It's one of the reasons I prefer used stamps to mint (which avoids this issue you're raising).

But I do have many mint stamps and come across others that are mint but have been previously hinged. In each case, even with the low value ones, I do what I can to preserve them from any further damage by mounting them in quality mounts.

It's true that it won't matter to me what becomes of them when I'm dead, but for now I enjoy the thought that they'll move on somewhere or someplace. It's a part of the attraction of the hobby for me.

What happens if you tire of the current arrangement of your stamps and want to arrange them differently? What happens if you become interested in watermarks? Or types of gum?

That is a very good question to consider. I've purchased a few older collections recently to help me find some stamps for my US collection. I've found that many of the used and unused stamps weren't treated very well by collectors because there weren't many rules of the road back then for how to care for your stamps. Some of the stamps I find that are 150 years old would be a treasure in anyone's collection if they had been treated a little better. So my thought is that I treat all newer stamps with the same care as the older ones by placing them in mounts. In another 150 years, I hope someone will be going through my collection and thanking me for the care I took. I know we all need to find our own way to enjoy collecting, but I thought I'd share the way I've been thinking about it lately.

What an interesting post!

When I was a tiny kid, just starting out, I glued stamps to my first album. I discovered hinges within a very short period of time and upgraded to that. Within several months of collecting, I was hinging used and storing unused in a stockbook for a later that took a long time to arrive at.

Here's my take on this: Even though my stamps aren't really worth very much, catalog-value-wise, I still treat them with the highest level of care I can give. I have many stamps which are substantially older than I am, many are older than anyone likely to be alive now. Newer stamps can survive for centuries to come.

I am, therefore, merely a steward, a caretaker for objects which have and which will outlast me. Because I'm not (or at least, I don't have to be) the final consumer of these items, I'll care for them and hope that after I'm finished, that someone else will want them and keep them.

Figure that ordinary paper from 200 years ago is generally worth a little bit on the collectible market, so the most ordinary "old" stamp will eventually have some small value, even if not much, it'll be worth more than "nothing" someday. With modern stamps, so few are used anymore that regular stamps and covers will be harder to find in the future. The USPS used to make millions of every issue. I don't believe production is as high for new issues. Coupled with the "throwaway" world of today, stamps for our modernity will be even more scarce.

I say take the best care you can reasonably afford (and by "afford," I mean not necessarily money, but what you can put out toward making the collection good...and safe).

No one knows what will happen tomorrow, but I operate my collection as though I'm building and maintaining something of value. They say that stamps tell the story of the nation issuing them, and toward that end, I try to preserve that story in my albums to the best of my ability.

I hope this helps you to decide how to proceed :-}

Josh