Getting Started with Stamp Collecting - page 3

for pre-teens

Now you have some stamps. What next?

Well, you should have something to keep your stamps in - like an album. You can do this in lots of different ways. The simplest is probably to buy a school notebook and keep your stamps in that. Oh - oh, the stamps all fell out after you carefully laid them out on pages - I guess you need to fasten them in somehow.

Well, you can either fasten them to the pages, or you can go to a more expensive kind of stamp album that has pages designed to hold the stamps in place. Let's talk about that choice later.

Fastening stamps to plain pages can be done using hinges - little pieces of paper that have glue on one side. You can buy them at any stamp collector store (get them to show you how to use them, and ignore the next two sentences!).

You fold them in half, with the sticky part 'outside', then lick one half and stick it to the stamp, with the crease of the fold at the top. Then you lick the other half and stick the stamp to the page.

Hold it !!!

Before you do that, you should decide exactly where you are going to stick the stamp. Also, before you use any hinges, you must decide if you want to use them on any "mint" stamps. Once you attach a hinge to a stamp with gum on the back, you remove part of the gum, and that could affect the value of the stamp. So, if you decide you want to keep mint stamps the way you got them, don't stick a hinge to them!!

You see, if Aunt Bertha gave you her lifetime collection of mint stamps, and you still want to get birthday presents from Aunt Bertha, do not stick hinges on the backs of those stamps!!

In fact, if you are given anyone's collection of stamps, please get some advice about how to take special care of them.

Want to learn even more?