Wine coolers! Who woulda thunk it?

Wine and stamps, could be a fun concept. :)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who makes plans to go some place when they are closed

Well, a wine cooler is not a bad idea, but all you really need to do in the summer, set your AC to a low to mid-70s setting during really humid days. In the Winter it is usually not a huge issue due to it being much dryer. Remember, too little humidity can be bad too.....causing paper fibers amd gum to crack and break. Differential shrink and expansion can also happen with large swings in humidity. I agree however, that REALLY valuable stuff is well kept in a humidity controlled environment.

Hi Silk, thanks for sharing your album of used US stamps. What is your approach to mounting them? I see some mounts and some appear to be hinged. Also, did you rob your Davo album, or are these surplus stamps?

Not to rub it in, but I found someone on Craigslist giving away a four-album Master Global set. It was a bar mitzvah gift he got in 1974ish, and he'd never touched it. I bought a Minkus supplement, found another MG binder, and the set sits nicely on the bookshelf. Just minimal wear on the bottom of the pages. But it doesn't bother me one bit; I'm a collector/hoarder, not a philatelist, and adding stamps to the books via gummed hinges (if you listen closely, you can hear the cries of "Egads!" and the sound of monocles shattering from snobby collectors) brings me joy. So, my friend, stick those albums on the shelf and just enjoy the pure collecting fun. After all, 99% of stamps are worthless, so don't give it a second thought.

Dry them between thick watercolor block paper. It’s foolproof

Put electrical tape on tweezers because stainless steel can easily damage wet paper

Rachel Ray is nice cookware? lol

Did you go to the stamp fair in Greenhills Ohio?

Brilliant video mate!

Nice Australian stamps! So cool you ran into Smokey:) I follow his channel as well. You guys are both so positive and I really appreciate the content u both put out. I am currently not happy with stamp hinges. It is a very humid, rainy day in WI, and all my Prinz hinges solidified into one big glob and hardened enough I could cut a cabbage in 1/2 with it. I seriously need to find some old Dennison hinges again. The Prinz ones not only arrived mostly stuck together...they are impossible to remove from an album page or a stamp without soaking them off. I don't know if these hinges I have would even be salvageable if I put them in a dehydrator. The best part about stamp hinges is that you know you're a real philatelist when you walk around with bare feet and find them stuck between your toes.

I do not use hinges at all. Not even used stamps. Always look neater,.

In this video or the last I think you mention moving one world wide album. What album are you planning for world wide. I’m going to do the same, but printing my own pages with album easy.

Albums are very expensive! I personally use stock books because I collect worldwide but also sell stamps. It allows me to add and remove items much easier than albums. I will place items in a hingeless album when I get older, but for my purposes today, I just use lighthouse stock books.

Also…you can rearrange the world. For example, instead of arranging all your counties alphabetically… set aside three albums for the British Empire, an album for North America (US / Canada) one for Central America one for South America , two more for Europe, one for Russia, and one for Asia. I’d also have a separate album for each of France and German Empires. The regional approach will be a bit different from the norm and you can include some geographical maps. I show the region as the area looked in 1840 and at the back show the area as it appeared in December 1940 while WWII was in progress.

Super !!! nice From sri lanka <3

Do achieve your GOAL AT THE MOST COST EFFECTIVE MEANS- is to use vario stock pages placed into three ring binders. You can then cover each binder in hand made paper covers or cloth or even leather book covers which will preserve a uniform look on the book shelf. Plus you can add varieties you come across. Bear in mind…both those albums are GENERAL ALBUMS. And you will come across shade varieties you want to keep. Use your two albums as reference so you can keep your stamps in a relative semblance Of date order. I have gone down this same mental gymnastic rabbit hole and this solution met ALL the goals. When I get bored… or low on funds… I focus on adding printed labels as inserts into a blank row above the stamp issues OR redesign the album cover, while keeping to the theme so the albums keep their uniformity and look similar on the shelf. I’ve never been happier. In addition… I’ll occasionally upgrade the individual stamps and take great care and time to remove any hinge remnants. Over time…it keeps me involved while actively working on my collection even when I am not accumulating new material. The worst thing I ever experienced was the completion of my US collection goal. Once I was done…and all stamps were placed into my Lighthouse Hingeless albums….I never again took them off the shelf to look at them. Yet…my world wide 1840-1940 Vario binders….have kept me up late into the night every day since 2020 and I have never been so happy joyous and FREE. Free to collect, inspect, and manipulate the collection. Plus it got my family interested as they now know that I’ll never sell my stamps as long as I draw breath but… it will be soooo much easier to liquidate the stamps as the future buyer will know they are all annotated and easily removed. Even the future blank pages can be sold as the vario stock pages last over two generations before they might need to be replaced. I envy the fun you are about to taste! Good luck and enjoy 😊

you got your money back on the BCOF. Seller must have been clueless. (...If folks want to put a 10 cent mount on a penny stamp, that's fine.)

Hi Silk, thx again for a new video and your never ending enthusiasm. Only the hinges, you love them. But I really don't, most of the times stamps are damaged by them. When you buy stamps, hinged on a fair or by ebay its always a casino. Will they be nice or not. But maybe I'm terribly wrong. Can you do in your next video some info about how to save the stamps which have hinges?

Can you remove a hinge or a you just further destroying the stamp?

Watching a lady bookseller on Y tube. One day she had a kangaroo bust into her warehouse...!! LOved the casual 'roos on the highways...!!

Do you have enough Irish stamps to do a video? Collecting mostly USA but if an Irish stamps turns up 'll probably get it if it's affordable...!!

I do like your videos, you have a lot of enthusiasm, and knowledge. I just started collecting, and I'm having fun. I'm not looking for anything rare, so far everything is easy and cheap. And, I like FDCs that I connect with, like ships, historical events, those are really cool.

I really hate hinges. I know they were used in the past in many cases, but today I see no use any longer for them. They have destroyed so many stamps.

Please, please, please don't use hinges. They are terrible things. Definitely not needed nowadays

I wish i still had Dennison hinges but as many have said they are to expensive for the few packs that are left.

Nice Australian collection and that cover was amazing! I need to go through my early Australian stamps to figure out what watermark varieties I have. I accumulated a ton of the good hinges from box lots over the years - hinges for used stamps are really the only option when collecting the world using large double sided page albums like the older, thinner paper Scott Internationals or Minkus Globals; the albums would get very think if too many mounts are used. I don't buy mint on purpose and if I get them with other stuff I tend to put them in stock books or trade them for more used lol. I just went through a couple thousand stamps removed from various albums - only a couple stamps got damaged by removing the hinges and they were fairly common. When I use a hinge, I also moisten the absolute minimum of the hinge to stick it to the album; elephant tongue is definitely a thing! However, I can see hinges not being used for small collections where you can house your collection comfortably in a hingeless album or vario sheets.

I really wouldn't worry about offending anyone by insulting stamp hinges. Lol, have we become so thin-skinned and "unhinged". ;-)

I absolutely love watching your videos. I’m learning a ton. Thank you very much for your efforts!

Did big-hinge get to you?

And now you have certificates touting “gem” or “jumbo” etc which somehow make 1950/1960/1970 mint US commemoratives with traditional catalog values of 25 cents somehow worth $75. 😂😂😂. At least for those foolish enough to buy. I like that Scott (my2015 edition) often has a disclaimer past a certain age of stamp that mint price is assuming hinged. As well it should.

I’ll use hinges on low-value previously-hinged stamps

Hey Silk, great pick up. Just two of those stamps would have easily covered what you paid for this lot, in Australia. Would sell for many $100. in Aussie. Have not seen those stamp sheets before, very attractive... Cheers Peter...

Nice Aussie collection.... hinges? Stock book? Printed Album? Collect what ya want, How ya want ! Getting Dennison stamp hinges on E-bay is expensive..... but even more expensive are stamp mounts..... I got really lucky - a friend was downsizing and gave me his stamp collection. Most of his stamps were CTO's (many of which I have given away, still a few to dispose of, as I despise CTO stamps, IMO, they are just stickers, not for any valid postal use....but anyway....) Among the stamp stuff I was given was one and a half boxes of unopened Dennison stamp hinges from the 70's.... which probably sets me up for for my stamp hinge needs for the rest of my life.... Fun that you met Smokey at that stamp show !

Clock ticking... Have you achieved your goal for Davo album I?

Sorry... But... I like pages for binders.... Easy reorganization of the collection! :D

You have ripped bandaid off 50 year old philatelic wound that still hurts. Imagine all the young collectors waking up one sunny morning in the early 1970s to find the "catalog value " their collections suddenly diminished by half. Why! Because they followed the long established practice of hinging their stamps into albums. Now, thanks to inflation, vultures looking for a hedge entered the philatelic market demanding their purchases be mint "never hinged". These newbies crushed the dream of a generation of established collectors who traded in their Scott catalogs for Beckett guides abandoning the educational and enlightening world of stamps for dream of riches to be had if only they could remember where mom put that box of baseball cards with the Honus Wagner rookie edition.😊

Hello, don't be tired, dear friend Have you checked our email or has it not arrived yet?

Glad you had an “epiphany” about hinges. When done as intended they make collecting used stamps very affordable. And you are totally correct when you say that modern stamps SUCK. Modern hinges don’t hold a candle to the old Fold o Hinges; not to mention a bag of 1000 for $.15. You couldn’t give me the 7:36 modern hinges.

Also, I think mixing hinges and mounts looks amateurish...

I feel like if one uses hinges, one needs to use cover sheets, and then one is always turning two pages to see the stamps.... I'm considering going to clear mounts. I'll be making up my own album pages for a ship stamp collection, and am considering using a heavyweight card stock in pale blue, with the clear mounts. I'm kinda tired of the white pages and black mounts and, also, lighter-weight pages wrinkle. Because I plan to create a unique but attractive specialty album that I enjoy looking through frequently, I'm going to eschew the traditional means of storage and display. As one of the other commenters noted, I also want to be able to add stamps or switch things around without redoing an entire page, so hinges are out.

I think hinges are not fantastic. I use only hawid mounts and stock books or separate pages. I also soak hinges away if possible to clean my collection. Of course there is nothing wrong to use hinges if one likes but I would never but hinge behing unhinged or mint stamp.

Over here, I don´t know any collectors who still are using hinges. The majority stores their stamps in stock books like Lighthouse or other brands. The reason is more than obvious: flexibility ! If you like to add some new items to your collection, stock books are the best way to stay flexible. But I know that collectors e.g. in the UK just used hinges for a longer time, so I even found sometimes mint material from the 1970s/80s with hinge traces. Just my two cents. 😉 Keep it up, and see you on the next one ! Greets from GER, U.

I don't think you came out to strongly about the problems with hinges. To this day, I'm convinced that hinges were invented by coin collectors to mess up philatelists... 🤣🤣🤣🤣

More stories? Yes please

stop laugh

I think your concern on preservation is valid. My own solution is to obtain stamp ring binders and stamp sheets which accommodate typically 7 rows of stamps per side ie 14 rows total for both sides of the sheet. This allows me to insert the stamps into a protective, hinge less environment. The transposition is quick but does require inserting information about the stamps. No different from writing up a collection. It also has the advantage that I can rearrange the collection if required. This can happen if a particular series becomes of greater interest and requires additional material. An example might be the Liberty Series going from a basic collection to one which includes tagging, gum, paper and perforation differences.

I absolutely loved this series. I love your advice to those of us just starting out.

I was thinking of focusing on military stamps to start. Is there such? Should I break it down even more ie: military aircraft etc?