Buying, Collecting and Mounting Stamps

When you buy stamps try to buy stamps in unsorted mixture. You can get the unsorted set based on weight. Though you are prone to get more duplicates in such mixtures, you can trade the duplicates in your club for getting other new stamps.

Stamps are also sold in packets. Stamps sold in packets do not have any duplicates and comes with the only known disadvantage of higher price tag.

You can find sets of stamps and any set will normally have all the stamps issued by the government. A set is called as 'full set' or 'broken set' meaning that the full set will have all the stamps in a series and where as one or two stamps will be missing in the broken set.

Once you have a big collection of stamps, you have to sort them out for easy manageability. If your stamps are still on envelopes, then you need to detach them from the envelopes carefully without doing any damage to the stamps. First decide on your idea based on which you will sort the stamps. Choose the related stamps and group them after putting all other unrelated stamps safely in glassine envelope.

Do not rip the stamps forcefully from the envelopes as the act can damage the stamp permanently. First soak them in lukewarm water in a clean container. Allow them to be in water till the stamp gets detached from the cover paper. Blot them dry using blotting papers or soft towels and get them dried in natural room temperature or atmosphere. You can get the wrinkles or creases removed by keeping the stamps between sheets of paper with few lightweights such as paperweights or bulk books over them.

If you have chosen to collect your stamps and arrange them based on the countries, then arrange them in groups and in alphabetical order by country. Sort them based on country?s names and you can also do a sub-sort within the country?s collection to have a meaningful arrangement.

The next task is mounting the stamps in an album. Before mounting them, however, do one more sorting to find and identify any worn-out stamps. You can discard any such worn-out stamps or mount them in a separate album based on their values.

When you mount your stamp collections, try to avoid stamps that are duplicates or stamps that have no value at all. Do not attach much importance to stamps that do not have any value and try to dispose them the way you deem fit without much loss of time ? the best rule of thumb is ?use it or lose it?. Restrict your collection and mounting to only stamps that are rare and have value.

Disclosure - Privacy Policy- Contact