Introduction

Stamp collecting is easy when you do it as a hobby. You can spend a lot of money for this wonderful hobby if you want to but you don't have to. Stamps can be acquired from various sources for free. You have to spend a very small sum of money to get a few accessories or supplies if you are starting from zero. In this section I shall discuss some basics of stamp collecting.

If you have no stamps at all, you might want to buy a packet of 500 or 1000 assorted worldwide stamps from a hobby shop or stamp dealer for about $3.50 to $6.50 to get started. In some stamp shows the dealers often sell a bucketful of stamps for $3. Some dealers sell on-paper stamps by the pound! These are called "kiloware". One good option to look for a big packet of worldwide stamps at an economical price these days is at eBay. Try entering phrases like "worldwide stamps" (for a packet of off-paper worldwide stamps) or "kiloware stamps" (for a bag of on-paper assorted stamps sold by weight) in the search box. Even if you want to specialize (like want to collect stamps of one country only or want to collect theme stamps) my advise is don't do it initially. Start off being a general collector until you have collected enough stamps (at least a couple of thousands) and gained enough experience so you know what your inclinations are. You should do what you like, not what others tell you.

Sorting Stamps

Now let us assume you have some stamps and they are on paper. (They will be on paper if you collect stamps the way I do). On-paper stamps means they have been cut off from the mail. Before you take them off the paper, you should sort the stamps, for example, by country. This is because handling of stamps is much easier when they are on paper. When you take them off the paper, they become pretty delicate - they bend, crease, and tear easily.

Trimming Stamps

Never try to take a stamp off its paper backing by pulling at it even if it appears to be loose enough to do so. This is a sure way of damaging a otherwise perfect stamp! First trim the paper around the stamp with a pair of sharp scissors making sure not to cut off the edge of the stamps (perforations). Until such time when you become an expert (it needs some dexterity of the hands), I recommend that you leave a quarter inch safety margin from the edge of the stamp when you trim the paper.

Soaking Stamps

Get a clean, medium sized, rectangular "Pyrex" glass baking dish or a shallow bowl about 8 to 10 inches in diameter from the kitchen and half fill it with clean water about your body temperature. Avoid the temptation of using warm or hot water. With warm water, stamps peel off from the paper much faster. But there is great risk of either the backing paper, or the cancellation ink, or the stamp itself running color thus ruining the stamp. Soak the stamps in small batches (about 8 or 10 at a time) until you have gained enough experience to handle bigger batches at a time. You can immerse the stamps completely in water (no matter who says what) provided you watch them for any misbehavior (such as running color). In my experience, so far as running of color is concerned, the worst offender is cancellations done by rubber stamp ink, especially of purple and red color. I fail to understand while postal authorities of most countries promote philately (stamp collecting), why do they allow post offices to put the cancellation marks with rubber stamp ink? And why leading philatelic organizations of the world like American Philatelic Society do not do anything about it? The second worst offender is colored paper backings (red is worst), such as stamps that have been cut off from greeting card envelopes. Rarely, stamps themselves can run color. So watch out. Do you sort your clothes when you do your laundry? Do the same for stamps. Group colored paper backing stamps together, stamps with cancellation marks of rubber stamp ink together, etc.. In fact, you are better off soaking this kind of problem stamps individually, i.e., one at a time. If you see the backing paper running color, take the stamp out and change the water immediately so the colored water may not stain the stamp. Stamps having rubber stamp ink cancellation marks should not be immersed completely in water. You should float them on water face up.

If you use water of your body temperature, soaking for about 15 minutes is usually sufficient. Most stamps peel off very easily at that point. But a word of caution: soaking time varies greatly from stamp to stamp. It all depends on the type of adhesive that is on the back of the stamps. Self-adhesive stamps that have become very common these days can take upto 2 hours though many self-adhesive stamps peel off easily in 45 minutes to about an hour. I have seen stamps dislodging themselves from the paper and falling to the bottom of the soaking vessel in less than a minute. My advise is after the stamps have soaked for about 15 minutes, pick one up with your fingers (yes, fingers - not stamp tongs; unless you are an expert, you sure will ruin the stamps if you use stamp tongs to pick up stamps when they are wet!!) and try to peel it off the paper very gently from one corner. If you meet with any resistance at all, drop it back in the water and try again in a few minutes. Some stamp pundits suggest that stamps should dislodge themselves from their backing when you should remove them from water. In my experience that sometimes takes a very very long time. That makes the stamp paper so soft that they tear very easily. So you have to strike a balance - soak the stamp long enough so it peels off easily but not so long as to make the stamp too soft and weak. Don't despair. Your experience will soon teach you exactly for how long a particular stamp should be soaked. The key is to stay with the stamps while they are soaking. Don't go away and don't forget them when they are in water.

Once the stamps are off paper, they need special care, especially when they are wet. This is what I do: When the stamps separate from the paper, I very gently rub off any remaining adhesive from their back with my index finger and thumb and put them in a second bowl of clean water to give them a final wash. The soaking water gets turbid very quickly. So change the water for every batch of stamps.

Drying Stamps

After the stamps receive a final bath, carefully pick them up with your fingers and lay them flat on a paper towel (face up) in a single layer, making sure the stamps do not touch each other. I then cover the wet stamps with another paper towel and give it a gentle press to blot the excess water from the face of the stamps. You can use old newspapers to dry the stamps but the printing ink from the newspaper may ruin the back of the stamps. These days, newspapers have a lot of colored printing (photos, comic strips, ads etc.). Never dry stamps on the colored part of the newspaper - it will stain the stamps.

Drying the stamps properly and flattening them is very important for their final appearance. Inexpensive stamp drying books can be bought from stamp dealers (about $4-5 for ordinary ones). I recommend you buy one such book. After the stamps have dried partially between two paper towels (plain, white kinds recommended), move them in the stamp drying book. Stamp drying books have alternate plastic-like pages (on which no stamp adhesives can stick) and blotter pages. You start from the last page of the book which is a plastic page. Lay the stamps face up on this page and cover them up with the blotter page. Turn the next page. It is plastic. Lay a second batch of stamps face up on this page and turn the blotter page over it. In this way you use the book from last page to first page. Whether you are drying one pageful of stamps or the entire bookful, remember to put some heavy books (like dictionaries) on top of the drying book so the stamps can flatten out nicely. Stamp flattening presses are available in the market, but there is no need to buy those unless you are collecting stamps for profit. In three to four hours the stamps will dry completely and flatten out nicely. I often leave the stamps in the drying book overnight. After taking them out of the drying book, I lay them flat on a table and let them air out for a few minutes.

Stockbook or Album?

After you have soaked, dried, and flattened the stamps, you have to organize the stamps for display and safe keeping. You can just keep them in a stockbook or mount them nicely on the pages of a stamp album. A stockbook, as the name implies, is for holding your stock of stamps. In this book the pages are made of Manila paper or boards of variable thickness on which thin strips of Manila paper, glassine paper, or crystal-clear poly film are attached in horizontal rows. The number of rows varies from about two to twelve per page so that different sizes of stamps or blocks of stamps can be accommodated. These thin strips of paper are like long pockets in which you stick the stamps side by side in a row. If you don't want to take the time to mount the stamps in your album, this is the second best way to store your stamps. Stockbooks are ideal for saving your duplicate copies. Stamp dealers use stockbooks to store their stamps.

Album Selection

Ideally stamps should be affixed to an album. Stamp albums can greatly vary in price from a few dollars (about $5-20) for a beginner's world album to over $5000 for a complete world album. Similarly, if you are specializing only on one country, a complete country album usually costs over $100. And don't forget new stamps are being issued by every country every so often. So you have to keep on buying supplement pages if you want to collect every stamp of either one country or of the world. In short, don't dream of acquiring all the stamps of the world - not even all the stamps of a single country. Stamp collecting then can become an extremely expensive hobby (Hobby of Kings). You can never get all the stamps of a country without buying them. That too is almost impossible even if you had a lot of money to pursue your hobby.

Consider making your own stamp album too. All you need is a three-ring binder and some blank pages. If you are a serious beginner consider buying acid-free blank pages. They will protect your stamps from harmful effects of acid present in ordinary paper. If you want professional quality album pages and you are computer literate (and have a few extra bucks to spare) consider buying album making software.

Making your own album will actually give you more flexibility in terms of organizing your collection as well as in terms of expenditure. If you are willing to spend some extra time in designing your album pages, I would say go for it. Ready made albums have many disadvantages. First of all you may not like the lay out of the pages. Secondly, your album may have 2 pages for one country and 5 pages for another but your collection may need just the opposite kind of space allotment. (This, of course, assumes you are not buying the complete world album with spaces for all stamps of every country.) Expandable albums are better than bound albums because you can add blank or supplement pages as your collection grows or as new stamps are introduced in the market. Deciding on the right kind of album is always difficult but it is very important. After you have started an album, if you change your mind, you may have to transfer all your stamps from one album to the other. That could be a really big project! But take heart. Almost no collector can buy the right album the very first time and almost all collectors have more than one album for one reason or another. You can always find an use for the first album (such as, you can keep your second grade stamps in it) should you discover later that the album you bought is not good enough for your purpose.

Affixing Stamps to Album

Okay, now that you have your album, how do you affix the stamps to the album? You don't paste the stamps directly on to the album pages nor do you use adhesive tapes, like Scotch tape. There are only two accepted ways of doing it unless you have bought the super expensive hingeless album, which is more or less like the photo album with pockets. (These albums have transparent foil pockets of exactly the same size as of individual stamps. You just have to insert the stamps in the pockets with a pair of stamp tongs.) The expensive and time consuming way is to use stamp mounts which are little plastic pieces which hold the stamps inside them and you attach the mounts to your album pages. The plus side of this is the stamps stay completely protected within the plastic holder (mount) thus ensuring their freshness over the years. This is highly recommended for those collectors who collect "mint" (unused, brand new) stamps with undisturbed gum on their back. The minus side is, mounts are pretty expensive and they come in various sizes to fit various sized stamps but still you need to cut them to the exact width of your stamp which is pretty cumbersome. The time honored method is to use stamp hinges which are quite inexpensive (about a dollar per thousand). This is really all you need if you collect used stamps, like I do. Stamp hinges are little rectangular pieces of folded glassine paper gummed on the outside. You lick and stick the shorter side of the hinge to the back of your stamp close to its upper edge. Then you lick the longer side of the hinge and place the stamp on your album page, face up, so that the longer side gets attached to the page. That's all. The stamp literally gets hinged to the album page so that you can lift up the stamp from its lower edge if you need to examine its back for any reason. (Good stamp hinges are peelable when completely dry and they are made of acid-free paper. The gum on them is a special one. A slight touch with the tip of your tongue is all that is needed to activate the gum.)

Caring for Stamps

Why on earth would anybody want to lift a stamp from its bottom edge to examine its back? Well, people who buy and sell stamps, do that all the time. Before they pay you big bucks for that rare stamp, they would want to make sure the stamp is not damaged in any way. The face of the stamp may look good but there may be 'thinning' of paper on the back. That will greatly reduce the value of the stamp. That is why it is important to take care of the stamps and protect them from any kind of damage including sun damage. Never leave your stamps on direct sunlight for prolonged period of time. The color of the stamp may fade.

Damaged Stamps

A lot of collectors do not collect damaged stamps at all. Admittedly, the value of a stamp is greatly reduced if the stamp is even slightly damaged. A slight crease, a hole, a small tear, thinning on the back, heavy cancellation mark, a missing angular projection from the perforation, etc. are all considered damages or faults. The question is do you keep such a stamp or throw it away? As far as I am concerned, I keep such stamps if that is the only copy I have. I discard that as soon as I get a better copy of the exact same stamp.

Stamp Tongs

A pair of stamp tongs is a useful tool for stamp collectors. It is easier to pick up an off-paper stamp with the help of stamp tongs. But some stamp experts over-emphasize the importance of using them. Be warned without a little practice you are likely to make a hole through the stamp while trying to lift a stamp with a pair of stamp tongs. It is true that tweezers used for grooming and stamp tongs are not the same thing though they look a lot like identical twins. If you must use a tool to handle stamps, buy a pair of stamp tongs. They are specifically made for the purpose.

So for beginners is: Do buy a pair of stamp tongs (if for nothing else, to look like a professional). They are cheap after all, about $3 for the ordinary ones. The shorter ones with a spade shaped tip is best for the beginners. But first practice using them with useless stamps or with plain paper cut in the shape and size of stamps. You will find that when you have some off-paper stamps laid flat on the work surface, it is easier to pick them up with stamp tongs. But you will have to use your fingers when soaking stamps or when sticking stamps to the album using stamp hinges.