"Never Hinged?"

Sometimes, I find stamp collectors to be curious and confusing creatures.

Take the term "Never Hinged." Now, I can perfectly well understand the importance of "never hinged" if you are a collector of mint stamps. On older issues (especially!) the "never hinged" part can make a huge difference in the value of the stamp.

This stamp has at least 3 old hinge remnants... but will soaking
it REALLY make it "Never Hinged?"

However, over the past couple of years I've noticed a growing trend for sellers of stamps (on eBay, BidStart, Stamps2Go, the APS Stampstore and more) to use the expression "never hinged" when describing used stamps.

I'm sorry.... WHAT???

As a concept-- and from a logical perspective, the idea of a "used, never hinged" stamp makes absolutely no sense to me. For starters, "never hinged" is a GUM condition, not a STAMP condition. Aside from that, it makes no sense. If I have a used stamp with hinges on the back, I can simply soak them off, and suddenly my stamp becomes "never hinged." Basically... there is no way to tell whether or not a used stamp is "never hinged" or not. Maybe I'm cynical... but even if "it mattered," I doubt never hinged could exist for used stamps, on "the honors system."

Of course, "reading between the lines," I can (sort of) understand how the idea came about. European collectors (especially) tend to be concerned about the back of (especially) older/classic stamps... where a thick layer of multiple hinges may be hiding small thins or tears, or even writing. A messy back with lots of adhesions can hide a million sins... I know this well, from my years of buying stamps online, where you don't always get a chance to look at the back of stamps.

But from a semantics perspective, what we're really talking about here is a "clean back," rather than a "never hinged" back. Then again, maybe I am simply being too picky.

In the meantime, I can't help but having a chuckle, every time I see "never hinged" in the description of a used stamp.

Random Stamp Musings: "Postally Used"

I collect used stamps.

To be specific, I collect postally used stamps. No CTO's for this boy... and I don't care, even, if said CTO's are from a "good" country.

When I was little, my father tried to get me interested in collecting mint stamps. The points he made was that (A) when you have a mint stamp, you can see the whole design, and (B) there are going to be far more used stamps than mint stamps-- in the long run-- so mint will be more valuable.

I did try-- briefly-- to collect mint stamps from France, but it "annoyed" me because I had to be so careful when putting them into my album. Besides, I just like used stamps-- to me, they are stamps that have done what "they are supposed to do:" they have carried a piece of mail from one point to another.

Whereas I don't spend too much time waxing philosophical about the "romantic" nature of a stamp's journey from one place to another, I do like used stamps for one simple reason: collecting postmarks allows collectors to form inexpensive collections... AND if you decide to collect town cancels, you can form a pretty extensive collection without ever having to spend more than a few cents a stamp. Well... for the most part.

It does sadden me a little that collecting used stamps is getting harder and harder to do. In days gone by, I could go to the local post office, make my way to the area with banks and banks of P.O.Boxes, and on any given day retrieve 15-50 perfectly good used stamps (and sometimes covers) from the garbage cans. Nowadays? Not so much. In fact, it's a rarity that commercial mail (of the kind that gets thrown away at the post office) is franked with stamps.

Collecting postally used stamps has also gotten more difficult on account of the proliferation of self-adhesive stamps. Never mind what different postal administrations might tell you, self-adhesives are more difficult to soak off paper... and a greater proportion of them get damaged during soaking... Some issues are all but impossible to get off paper in one piece, and some countries (like the UK) now issues stamps with built-in "security features" that adds to the difficulty of removing the stamp from the envelope.

These difficulties aside, I will continue to collect postally used stamps, and especially those with interesting and really nice postmarks. I will continue to buy kiloware from different parts of the world, as long as a supply exists. It may be true that newer postally used stamps are getting more difficult to find, but in a sense that adds to the challenge of building a collection.

If all else fails, I may end up getting back to the boxes of old kiloware "I never quite got around to" soaking!

The Backs of Stamps

Some years ago, I remember being at the annual Austin, Texas Stamp and Postcard show, put on by the local stamp club. In between sifting through dealer stocks for interesting finds, I spent a little time looking at the exhibits.

One of the exhibits was entitled "Mint Never Hinged."

It cracked me up, because it was offered by a very "serious" collector from the community... and all it was two frames showing... THE BACKS OF STAMPS.

I knew the collector behind the exhibit, so I also realized that he was poking fun at the near-obsession people often have with gum, and its condition.

I have always collected used stamps. My father (who was a "casual" collector, at best) tried to get me "into" mint, but it just never appealed. Whereas I can appreciate the fact that a mint stamp allows you to see the whole image, I just find used more interesting. As that collector with the "MNH" exhibit reminded me, I collect the fronts of stamps. Which isn't to say that I don't look for thins and markings on the back of my stamps; the back is simply not my focal point.

As I think about my preference, I realize something: A mint stamp feels "static," to me-- that is, it's just "a point in time." A piece of paper, printed on (or around) the date of issue. A used stamp "tells a story." As I collect them (with readable cancels), my used stamps tell me of a place and a time, when someone mailed a letter, or something else. If I have the entire cover, I know more about the "story" of the stamp's journey.

I realize part of this is perhaps born out of a sense of "romantic adventure." Take the stamp at right-- from Norway, with a crowned posthorn cancel "SVALBARDRUTEN." It doesn't even have a date, but I can imagine it being on a letter, loaded on the periodic freight ship that sails between mainland Norway and the remote Svalbard Island group, in the far Arctic North Atlantic. And that simply makes the stamp more interesting to me.

I'm not saying there are "right" or "wrong" ways to collect. We should collect in ways that make us happy, and give us the most enjoyment of the collection. For me, that means collecting used stamps.