To soak or not to soak?

stainlessb

I do not soak   ...never have in my short life !!!! lol
The hinges......if I cannot safely remove them in totality.....I would leave the remnants - they are "used" after all -  what value are you going to add by soaking them ?? (except your valuable time) ....I am waiting for other opinions//// they will not change my mind and the catalogs have nothing for hinged/partially hinged or not hinged.... on used stamps 
René

Like renden, I do not soak off hinge remnants.The only time I typically soak stamps is when I am removing them from paper. There have been, however, stamps that I have run across in collections I have bought, that had a bit of remnant paper, as well as a couple layers of hinges. I have gone ahead and soaked these sometimes, especially if they have more than minimum catalog value just so I can see what the stamp looks like underneath all that detritus. There have been a couple of times where a damaged space filler has appeared once all the junk was soaked off.

Well, Stan, by now you can probably see that this question will have as many answers as there are respondents.  In the end, it will be up to you to decide what to do.

These days, I get a lot of my stamps from old mounted collections, and sometimes some quite nice stamps have multiple hinges on the backs, or were never properly soaked in the first place and have quite a bit of paper on the back.  I soak those.

In general, I try to avoid soaking unused stamps, but my philosophy is that if the presence of the hinge remnant detracts from the appearance of the stamp on the front, as sometimes heavily hinged stamps do, I use a tiny bit of Stamp-Lift fluid and carefully remove the hinge remnant and then press-flatten the stamp using waxed paper on the gum side.  That usually results in a nice, flat stamp which looks good from the front.  Yes, the gum is disturbed that way, but if it improves the appearance from the side I enjoy looking at, then I usually figure that's worth it.

You are right to be concerned about repeated or prolonged soakings fading or damaging stamps.  That can happen.  There are also fugitive inks which will fade or disappear altogether in water....

thestampforum.boards.net/thread/4677/hong-kong-qv-fugitive-inks

Best of luck with whatever you decide to do. 

I never soak. All go into mounts so no rehinging, etc.

This is another reason why I don't soak off hinges except when they are extremely over-hinged, similar to what brightonpete describes, I mount all my stamps, used or mint in plastic mounts so generally the hinge on the back is not a problem.