[STAMP COLLECTING.]
BY J. J. CASEY.
I have no doubt that many of the readers of Young People are stamp collectors, and that many more are ready to become stamp collectors if they are started properly. Little difficulty is experienced at the present day in getting a good assortment of stamps, because the great spread of the postal system, and the resulting increase of correspondence, bring the stamps of every foreign country into the business houses of New York. But the main difficulty is so to manage with the stamps as to make them more than a plaything for a few weeks—to make them really instructive, and their possessors real Philatelists.
The materials requisite for the beginner are very few—a blank book, some sheets of very thin writing-paper, and a small bottle of pure gum-arabic dissolved in water and made thin. Of course, when the collection increases and begins to assume form, this blank book must give way to a special album; but in the beginning a small book, worth, say, four or five cents, will suffice. Thus provided, you are ready to begin your collection.
Fig. 1.
Every reader of Young People has friends who have a correspondence more or less extensive, and whose desks are, therefore, store-houses of postage stamps. Requests for these stamps will seldom be denied, and in a very little while the beginner will have enough to make a start. Look over the specimens, pick out those that are the cleanest, and put aside as useless those that are torn or much defaced. Remove any superfluous paper from the back of the stamps selected for use by carefully touching the backs with warm water, when the adhering paper can easily be peeled off. Then cut the sheets of thin writing-paper into strips half an inch wide, gum along one edge of the strips, and lay the stamps on the gummed edge as in Fig. 1. Next cut the strips and trim the paper as in Fig. 2. Now fold this little strip of paper backward, so as to make a hinge, and fasten it to the blank page by a touch of gum. This is called mounting the stamp.
