Peeps at Postage Stamps

by Stanley C. Johnson

When a hundred or more varieties have accumulated, an album should be procured. These may be obtained at all prices and in a bewildering variety of patterns. Too often the young philatelist provides himself with a voluminous album in which his tiny but growing collection appears as a drop of water in the ocean. It is far better to buy a small, cheap album which may serve as a temporary home until the treasures have grown sufficiently numerous to warrant a more expensive one.

Many collectors prefer to house their stamps in a scrap-book containing a number of fairly stout, smooth, blank leaves. In such a book as this we are free to arrange the stamps just as fancy dictates; we can place them close together or far apart, and we can reserve as many or as few pages as seems desirable for each individual country. The writer's collection is contained in two books of this description. Great Britain fills the first fifteen pages, and the Colonies follow in alphabetical order in the first volume. In the second volume the foreign countries are set out in the order in which their Governments first issued stamps—i.e., Brazil comes first, then the United States, then France, Belgium, Bavaria, Spain, etc. This is, of course, a somewhat unusual plan to follow, but it certainly has advantages.

Whilst speaking of albums, it will be well to point out that stamps should never be fixed to more than one side of a page. If both faces are used, the stamps will rub against each other and also catch one with another.

Before the specimens are placed in the album, each should be carefully examined, and cleaned, if necessary. When paper is adhering to the backs, it should be removed. This unsticking process is easily performed when the specimen is immersed in a bowl of hot water, but, unfortunately, many stamps will be utterly ruined if even a trace of moisture is allowed to come in contact with their colours. No rule can be given as to which stamps spoil and which do not when treated with a hot bath, but it is safe to say that valuable specimens suffer considerably, whilst common varieties emerge from the ordeal unscathed. Perhaps this is just a matter of natural contrariness.

To be on the safe side, however, no stamp should be plunged into hot water. Cheap varieties may well be floated on the surface of warm water, but the rarer kinds must not be subjected to even this treatment; they should be placed face upwards on a sheet of wet blotting-paper, and left until the adhering paper can be peeled off without an effort. After the under-surface of a stamp has been cleaned, it should be pressed between two sheets of dry blotting-paper and carefully dried. If it seems liable to cockle or is creased in any way, it is a good plan to flatten it out by means of a warm, though not hot, iron, the stamp being protected by three or four thicknesses of white blotting-paper.

Fixing the stamps to the album is the next operation. On no account should the under-surface be gummed all over and the whole stamp stuck down to the page of the hook. The collection will need constant rearranging, certain specimens will have to make way for more perfect copies, and so on; this will be quite impossible unless hinges are used. These contrivances are thin but tough pieces of paper, approximately one by three-quarters of an inch in size, and gummed on one surface. They cost about sixpence per thousand.

Overprinted Stamps 1 Indian stamp used by Chinese Expeditionary Force 2 Great Britain: Army Official 3 India: On Her Majesty's Service 4 Indian stamp used in Patiala 5 North Borneo stamp used after institution of British Protectorate 6 Indian stamp of 1/2 anna converted to 1/4 anna 7 Great Britain: Inland Revenue 8 Bulgaria: Change of value 9 Bermuda 1s. value converted to 1/4 d. 10 Portugal stamp surcharged "Republic"

When a stamp is to be fixed to the album, a gummed strip is taken and folded so that the adhesive side is turned outwards; one flap is then moistened and stuck to the stamp and the other is moistened and stuck to the page. The specimen is thus hinged to the album in such a way that its underside can be inspected easily—a necessary matter when the watermark or the quality of the paper requires examination. The hinge should be fastened as high up on the back of the stamp as possible, but not so high that it touches the perforated edge.

One little point needs mention. On no account should cheap hinges be used or hinges made at home and fixed with ordinary gum. Unless the adhesive is entirely free from acid—and ordinary or cheap gum is not—the stamps will become discoloured and entirely ruined. The writer laments to this day a fine set of old Queenslands which he fixed, many years ago, by means of some cheap and nasty hinges. The stamps grow more and more discoloured as time wears on, but the exasperating thing is that good copies of these Australian treasures are now worth almost as many pounds as they were pence in the days when the offending gum was applied to their under-surface.