Stamp Collecting Supplies - A Summary Of What You Need

While Stamp Collecting is not as flashy of a hobby for some, as let's say collecting Aston Martins, or early works of Picasso, it is a very rewarding hobby, and generally inexpensive.

So to put together the gear you'll need to handle and store your stamps, you don't have to become Donald Trump. All you need is a few small goodies you can buy in any household shop, and chances are, you've already got most of this at home.

Magnifying Glass

Unless you have a vision worthy of a super hero, you'll need a nice Magnifying Glass to inspect your stamps, from all the small details to a careful examination of the state a stamp is in.

Size is not so important, just make sure you take a glass that strong enough to see all the details, and light enough to work with for a while. Often an ordinary magnifying glass you find in school kits is all you'll ever need.

Tweezers

If they work for eyelashes, they'll work for stamps. Be careful however not to use tweezers with very sharp or pointy ends, as there is a risk of tearing a hole in stamps that are still damp. While there are special tweezers with thin rubber padding available for passionate collectors, in the beginning you'll be fine if you just steal them from your girlfriend.

Stamp Hinges

These are small mounts for your stamps. Usually made of a special, thin paper that is gum coated for more sturdiness. This is what you will effectively place the stamps into, before it makes it way into the album.

They are either black or white, and sometimes dark blue.

Watermark Detector

The back of a stamp will ofter hide a specific pattern or a watermark. While there are special UV lamps to detect this, "old school" way is to drip a drop or two of benzine on the back of a stamp.

Just make sure you don't use diesel or kerosene or crude oil as that's a bit silly, and by all means don't do it by the candle lights ( it's bad for your eyes).

Joking aside, there are special solutions for this, but benzine works just fine as it has no color

And once you deepen your knowledge about stamps:

Perforation Gauge

This is a little measure to help you count the number of holes or "roulettes" on a stamp. You basically count how many perforations are there per length of 2cm. Often, you'll find that stamps from the same batch, issue and of same design have a varying number of holes.

Chalk-surface Detector

To detect the type of paper of the stamp, this little tool comes in very handy, as it will reveal if you're dealing with chalk surface paper.

Johfra Sweat-box

To put it simply, it's a sort of a mini sauna for your stamps and hinges. A special damp pad inside the box will clean the hinges and paper without removing the glue. Mostly used on mint condition stamps that still have envelope paper on them or old hinges that need a brush up.

UV Lamp

Just like James Bond, you too can detect hidden markings of phosphorous nature on your stamps. Who knows what mysteries are written in those fluorescent notes unseen to the naked eye.

Utterly exciting as it is, UV lamps are more commonly used to check out the damages on stamps, and to verify their authenticity.

And that's it. It won't kill your budget and it's not hard to find. So go get it, and happy collecting.

Eddie finds stamp collecting a rewarding hobby. He is particularly interesting thematic collections and his latest endeavour is collecting Gibraltar stamps.