Stuck with Self-Stick Stamps

There has been much in the philatelic news lately about the difficulties of newer self-adhesive stamps. About.com Stamps has dealt with the subject of these items a number of times in polls and blogs and articles. Some collectors have been trying all sorts of things to remove the stamps from envelopes. Others have wondered how to make them stick on a page, as hinging doesn't seem to be an option. (The backing paper is too slippery.)

Could it be that we should deal with our stamps as stickers? After all, the way collectors collect has always been a fashion, never a science or a law. Never hinged stamps? You'll pay big bucks for the older ones, while you can get the same stamp in hinged condition for a song. Now, do you think this occurred due to some great scientific study that a never-hinged stamp is intrinsically more valuable than a hinged one? No, it is just the way collectors of the past decided they wanted to collect their stamps, thereby launching any number of businesses selling not stamps, but mounts and holders to keep them in. (It also spawned a number of disreputable sellers who regummed their stamps in order to charge higher prices.)

Of course, it is easily understandable that stamp collectors want their stamps to be in the best condition possible, even if the condition problem is a hinge mark on the back that no one looking at the stamp in an album would ever see. After all, if in real estate the three deciding factors of desirability are "location, location, location," one might say that the three factors in stamp collecting are "condition, condition, condition."

But as an employee at a Minkus Stamp and Coin counter, I always shook my head when collectors would buy $20 worth of mounts in which to put their $2 (and always to be $2) worth of stamps. So, I ask -- what are you collectors of used U.S. going to do to get your slippery backed stamps to stay in your albums? And mint US collectors -- will you be sticking your stamps on album pages, like the stamps are nothing more than...stickers? Will album makers no longer make stamp albums, but sticker albums? And what will be the future value of a mint stamp removed from its backing paper and stuck in an album? I think these are valid questions to consider as our collecting habits change with the progress in technology.

It's a shame that as art and printing on modern US issues has never looked better -- the beauty of classic engraved stamps notwithstanding -- saving them has never been more of a challenge.