How Does One Store Mint Stamps?

Storage conditions are key.

In all the years I carted around my stamps, I never had a problem. Being in the Canadian Military, I have lived on all 3 coasts of Canada, Germany for 3-½ years & some travelled with me on a ship in the Pacific, and some were in long-term storage while in Germany as well.

I suppose luck played with my experience, but I've always kept stamps either in albums, or displayed singly in stock books. As in - beside each other & none on top of other stamps. That means more books for all the stamps, but I liked it better that way.

Some of my mint collection is inmounted on pages I created or purchased albums. Some are stored in Lighthouse brand stock books. The rest are in glassine envelops or dealer cards. I have not had any serious issues. There has been a few in glossines that stuck together . This was due to less than ideal storage conditions. On a regulars basis I will verify with a quick flip through to see that humidity is ok. Because of changing conditions seasonlyy, I move some albums. and boxes around to minimize humidity exposure.

My goal is to have everything mounted or in a stock book at some time.

I am sure you might find other suggestions and ideas and threads on this subject by using the Forum «  search » link at the top of homepage. You may have to to a bit or reading and scrolling. There are years of information there that could help out in discovering more details  about  our hobby.

happy Collecting and reading.

david

One point not mentioned above is conversion from regular gum into glazed gum. Such stamps do not necessarily stick together, but they are ruined for philatelic purposes. I am thinking, perhaps wrongly, that pressure rather than humidity is the cause of glazed gum, which is hard and ultra-shiny, and clearly differs from normal gum. In my experience, U.S., Canada, and Switzerland suffer the most glazed gum.

Insects, especially silverfish, are also a factor in gum damage. They bore (by eating) perfect 0.5mm holes in any food source they discover, like gummed paper, and you never know they are there.

That's the beauty of constant air conditioning. It dehumidifies the air as it cools it. Where I am (near the NH seacoast) it's always dry in the winter, but in the summer the water table is about equal to the top of the concrete in my basement.

For brightonpete, I was at Boeblingen (Panzer Kaserne) for all of 1969. Once a month, we'd pile into my VW bus and visit the Canadian air base at Lahr. Your PX was much better than ours.