Speak of the devil...I just lost the ink on at least 2 of my very early half pence Trinidad stamps in just warm water alone! World Wide stuff is more tricky than the US material. oh well..

Tough luck, looks like tap water is still the way to go for me...for now.

I have used lukewarm water for removing gummed stamps from paper (this does not include the self adhesives, thats another story). Once they have soaked for 10-15 minutes, most stamps will come off the paper without any resistance. After removing them from the paper I stick them to the side of the sink for a few minutes, to drip dry. Then I place them upside down on newspaper to dry overnight. Once they are dried, I place them in some sort of magazine or catalog, make sure they have shiny pages, and press them under some telephone books or any other heavy books. After a few days, they are flattened and ready to be placed in a album.

If you want to remove the self adhesives easily, I can start a post for that. I have a true and tried remedy for that too.....lol

please do Kacyds

Consider it done.

Just finished soaking and removing about 500 worldwide stamps from paper. It brings back many memories as a kid, removing the stamps that my mother brought home from work.

To bad that the US doesnt follow some other countries with there self adhesives, it would make life so much easier.

Most of my soaking and drying of late is from stamps in the 1945-67 range for the most part and what a difference they are from modern stamps!

A bowl, some warm water, a tad bit of agitation to assure everything is properly soaked and in a matter of minutes those old stamps all but float off the paper. The one thing that slows me down the most with soaking and drying is I use a drying book and I can fill it in not much time but have to wait for the drying to occur. Still in all it's those old stamps can be soaked and dried as fast as the system allows for.

Yes BP, its amazing how quick those old stamps dry. But I always wondered why most stamps dry flat, there are a few that always seem to curl. Does anyone have any insight on that????

Yeah those older stamps always seem to dry flatter and faster. As for the drying book, I use a watercolour artist pad. Works wonders and is cheaper than the ones you get from the stamp dealers/suppliers.

I never would have thought of that Ross. I will look into that. Thanks for the great tip.

i tried that doodle pad i mentioned elsewhere (perhaps here) and found that the pages and hence the stamps ended up wavy .. i was not happy with having to resoak and start over..

Ross do you find any issues with the water color book?

So far, none. 99% of them come out nice and easy and flat.

hmmmm may have to look into one soon..

Previously I mentioned in some topics that I was trying out a watercolor sketchbook as a drying book. Slightly smaller than an A4-size, here's how it looks like.