Soaking Stamps

I haven't soaked stamps in 10 or 12 years. I just got a really nice batch from Barbados and Anne was interested so I figured I'd show her how it's done.

I think I first started soaking stamps when I was eight which would be 1974. it was fun back then, but what really wrecked it was all the new self-adhesives that started coming out in the 1990s. Most of those would not soak. Some countries like Finland would soak perfectly well, but it got annoying trying to remember which ones were going to soak and n which ones would not.

The process is pretty simple, just soak them in warm water and have a towel ready.  Give them about 15 minutes then swirl them around. The easy ones will fall off on their own.  Others will slide off the paper easily.  Sometimes you do have to peel them a little bit ... if you do have to peel them remember to pull the paper not the stamp because the one that you pull is the one that's likely to rip.  You take the wet stamps and put them on the towel while all the blank paper just goes in a pile.  I always start them face down on the towel, because if you put them face up any remaining adhesive might stick to the towel.

 

Give them an hour or two on the towel to dry. It's surprising how sensitive our fingers are, but you can probably tell by feeling them whether they're entirely dry.  You might want to flip them over.  I'm not sure if that will speed up the drying or not.

 

Once they're soaked and dried, I put them face up in some manila folders and squish them under my pile of stamp catalogs.  Don't make thick piles, try to get them only one or two stamps deep, or they will come out with slight bends from the thickness of all that paper.  

 

That's pretty much how you do it. 

 

Each country has its own "behavior" when it comes to soaking their stamps.  We just did a batch of modern Germany issues and they all came off just fine.  Even the se;f-adhesives.  Sometimes,you'll get a plastic-looking spot or spot of paper, but you can roll your finger over those, roll them up like little carpets, and flick the spot onto the junk pile.

You might wonder how some countries manage to make self-adhesive that soak well, while modern US stamps never let go.  It's because the printers will use a layer of water-soluble gum underneath the tough, self-adhesive gum, and at some point the main USA stamp printers decided to cut corners and leave out that layer.  You can still soak those in various solvents, and tips can be found on the Web, but I don't really want to be handling chemicals.  If I collect self-adhesives that I know won't soak, I just collect them on paper, nicely clipped.