Opinions On Best Stamp Hinges

Scotch make tape meant for photographs that is supposed to be able to release.... It scares me a little though, never used it

The topic of this thread has been discussed multiple times before, so maybe search for those threads, too?

Someone here used "Dennisen" and "Dennison" together as if they might be the same hinges. They aren't. This is widely known, but apparently not widely enough. "Dennison" (with an 'o') hinges are the well-known older brand no longer made for decades now. Well-known because they were excellent hinges that held well but peeled off easily. No longer made for unknown reasons but there are various surmises we've all heard. Today, old stock of Dennison hinges sell for ridiculous amounts of money on ebay.

"Dennisen" (with an 'e' for those who haven't noticed) are a knock-off brand which intentionally tried to copy the other name. They do not peel easily and are probably not worth the money. There is another brand produced briefly by Subway Stamp Shop called "Dennis's Hinges" which were an attempt to replicate the originals, but I've never used these and I don't think they were a success.

All other hinges today are made by the same German company. This has been reliably reported. I think it might be Prinz, but I'm not sure. They are packaged by the hinge manufacturer under various names, some of them album manufacturers and others -- but they are apparently all the same hinges.

How do I know this? Well, I've been told this so many times I believe it. But because, as we see every day, people often repeat claims which turn out not to be true ("I'm looking at you, American politics"), I did my own experiment to find out. I bought and tried all major brands of hinges sold today, about 20 of them (that's a guess). Name a hinge brand and I probably tested it. What I found was was no difference between them at all in how they look or how they work. They all held just fine, too well in fact. Every one could not be peeled off without doing damage to the stamp and the album page they were mounted on -- all of them. There was no "winner" at all which suggests only one manufacturer.

Stamp mounts are much safer for stamps, but of course they cost a lot more. The average price of hinges works out to well under 1c per stamp or less. One cent each would be paying $10 for a package of 1000 hinges and many are cheaper than that. Stamp mounts average around 5-6 cents a mount with about 120 cut-your-own mounts costing around $7-8 a package. For a standard collection of one country's stamps, let's say 4,000 stamps, that works out to maybe $40 for hinges to mount the entire collection but $200+ for stamp mounts. Over the years, the collection in mounts will retain a great deal of its value and be well protected while the hinged collection is not as likely to do either. It's worth it for me to use mounts. Mounting those 4,000 stamps would likely take many months, so spread out over months and years, the difference may not matter to you much. But clearly hinges are much cheaper.

I use hinges on most used stamps. After all, they're already hinged. I use very little moisture on hinges and usually cut my hinges in half (vertically) so very little adhesive gets on the stamp. This prevents most further damage. Hinges are cheaper, much faster to use, and I like the look of hinged stamps on album pages. Most of my hinged stamps are ordinary stamps not worth very much, so I don't feel too bad in terms of protecting the stamps. All my mint and all my valuable used stamps in my various collections go into stamp mounts. Further protection comes from using interleaving between pages which have stamps on facing pages. And I put all albums in slipcases to keep out dust and dirt and maybe insects. So I try to protect my stamps as well as I can.

The OP said in their Alpha post the following:




I noted this a ways back but it seemed not to matter as the discussion carried on regarding hinge suitability for mounting and dismounting stamps safely and efficiently.

Apparently, and the OP can correct this statement if necessary, hinges here are not touching stamps. They are touching mounts. Yes? No? Maybe?

Yes - it makes it a little less likely that the album page will be damaged, and makes it easier to reuse the mount if desired. Much too much trouble for me.

I searched and wondered if there was an update. I even found that SubWay bought the old equipment, reverse engineered the adhesive but it still did not work as well...




Uggggggggg! No, I did not know. I am new here and I had no idea. I ordered some Dennisen that I figured I would only use on special occasions.

So if anyone wants to try some for no particular reason, shoot me a message somehow and I will drop a few your way.




From what I read, they were in the middle. Not Good, not Bad. There was another brand that also feel into the middle, but it does not matter if everything new is currently made by Prinz.






Wow, good on you for that.




For sure I have spent more than $800 on mounts in my lifetime.

And it takes more time to use mounts. Find the mount of the correct size, etc... And then I still use hinges because the mount will damage the page if you use just the mount and then try to remove it.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

Almost all of my US stamps are in mounts. If I have a used US stamp, it is usually pretty old and worth enough money that I will not risk a hinge, at least not with a modern hinge.

There are some stamps, especially if they are foreign or if I am for some reason highlighting lower value US stamps that I will want to use a hinge, but I am afraid to with the PRINZ stamps because they are brutal on a stamp.

I still use hinges on mounted stamps (well, usually) so that I can remove the mount if I want with minimal damage to the book. This is particularly important if I am moving a replaced stamp from my collection to say my Daughters collection.