Storing your Stamp Collection

Storing your stamp collection is an important, but often overlooked, topic. How well you store your stamps can have an effect on their value, and perhaps more importantly on your enjoyment of your collection.

Common Storage Methods

You're probably familiar with the common storage methods, but in case you're not let's just cover them quickly here:

Stamp Albums

Stamp albums are the most common method of storing your stamps. They're custom made for the task and make looking through your stamps extremely easy and enjoyable. For stamp albums an important choice is between hinged and hingeless albums, we'll cover that in a while.

Glassine Envelopes

Glassine envelopes keep your stamps safe. You can even fit several stamps in one envelope. But they're not as good for viewing as a stamp album!

Archival Boxes

Often people will store multiple stamp albums in archival boxes. Because, well, with the whole world to choose from your collection can get quite big!

Hinged and Hingeless, what's this about?

A hinge is a little strip of gummed glassine or paper that you can use to attach the stamp to your album. Proper, modern, hinges are designed to do very little damage to the stamp. But it is a physical binding so a minimal amount of damage is inevitable (and a larger amount if old or not good hinges are used). This can affect the value of your stamps.

Hingeless mounting is the alternative. This is basically pockets to hold your stamps. This downside is less flexibility in positioning and arranging your stamps and a generally higher cost. This is probably worth it for maintaing your stamps' condition.

Environment

Like any paper item, the conditions you store them in are essential. Particularly you want to avoid moisture. Lofts, attics, and basements are generally not a good idea.

Re-use the little silica moisture bags you get in other products to keep the moisture level good for your prized collection.

Keep at around room temperature and out of sunlight.

While it's not an environment thing - keep in mind the long term effects of chemicals and just stuff off your hands. Always use tongs or gloves and never directly touch your stamp collection.