Soaking stamps is one of the basic skills the beginning collector must master. There is nothing difficult about soaking stamps; but care should be taken before, during and after soaking to avoid damaging the stamps... a little patience doesn't hurt, either. Used stamps are generally collected off paper and, therefore, learning the techniques for achieving this are important.

The first step in soaking stamps is the process of trimming and sorting. Trimming involves the removal of excess paper to within about 1/4 of an inch from the stamp. This speeds the soaking process and lowers the amount of contaminants that dissolve in the water by limiting one of the sources, the paper, the stamps are on. When trimming, all ink writing should be removed as close as possible to the stamp without cutting into the stamp. Many pen inks run in water and they can very easily run into adjacent stamps ruining them in the process. Also when trimming, you want to remove as much of the airmail envelope border as possible. These borders, for the most part, also run and can stain the backs of the stamps on them or those stamps that are near them. If possible, bend back these borders from under the stamp and then trim away if you can do this without damaging the stamp.

The next step in soaking stamps is to sort them. What you want to do here is separate those stamps on colored paper from those on white paper. You want to separate those with air mail borders away from those without borders. The dyes in colored paper often run; and if this happens, many stamps may be ruined. You also want to set aside the self-adhesive stamps. These stamps take much longer to soak free and many of the foreign ones don't soak off at all. Last, if you are soaking US stamps, remove those on the yellowish manila paper.

Now you are ready to soak. You will start by soaking those stamps on white paper. When you are new at this, start with a small bowl of lukewarm water (the water should be just warm enough that it doesn't feel cool when you put your hand in it). As you get more experienced, you can move to larger containers and more stamps. Add about 10-20 stamps on white paper to this small bowl. Occasionally, gently run your finger around to slowly agitate the contents. After about ten minutes the stamps should start to float off their paper. As they float off, gently lift them out with your finger and dunk them in another bowl of cool, fresh water to wash them. Drain them by touching them to the side of the bowl; then place them face down on a towel or drying book. Leave them there until they are dry, and then place them carefully in a stockbook to allow them to flatten out. As you remove stamps from the water, also try to remove the paper they were stuck on. This gets some of the glue out of the bowl before it dissolves in the water. When you soak the stamps on colored paper, soak fewer of them in more water and use cool water. It will take longer for these stamps to float off (because cold water dissolves gum slower than warm water; cold water also dissolves dyes slower than warm water, which is why you use colder water on colored papers that may run). Not all stamps have the same kind of glue. Some will come off quickly, others will take quite a while to come free. Be patient! When you rush things, you ruin your stamps. Peel the backs off only as a last resort. Some new U.S. stamps fall apart if you soak them a long time or the various layers of paper and ink buckle; so if you are not familiar with the stamps you are going to soak, experiment with small quantities so all are not ruined.

A last comment. The so-called manila envelopes often used to mail larger-than-normal material will stain your stamps if you allow more than minimum time in the water bath. Try to get the stamps on that type of paper to float off first if you mix them in the white paper soak.

Here are a few tricks with which to deal with different situations. If you wish to soak a stamp off of a postcard or envelope without cutting up the envelope or post card (people will often offer to let you have stamps off of their mail if you don't destroy the mail), here is how to do it. Cut two pieces of filter paper (from a new coffee filter) that are a little larger than the stamp you wish to remove. Wet these two pieces of filter paper until they are about to drip. Place the filter papers on top of each other and on top of the stamp. Cover with a small inverted plate or a watch glass (you can get these from broken clocks) and leave for about one-half hour (practice will get this down to a science). The purpose of the plate or watch glass is to retard evaporation. The stamp should slip off easily. Place the envelope or card somewhere to dry, and place the stamp face down on a Formica top or a smooth metal surface. The stamp will pop free when dry.

You can soak large amounts of cheap stamps using the following method. It sounds like it won't work, but it does. Place several pounds of stamps in a large tub of lukewarm water (the stamps should be sorted for colored paper as above). After about ten minutes, gently agitate the mixture with your hands for about a minute every ten minutes until it appears most of the stamps are coming free (about an hour). Let the stamps settle and pour off the water laden with gums and dirt. Add new water. Agitate and let stand several minutes and then again pour off the water. Do this several times more to get all of the gum out. Practice again makes perfect. After it looks like all the gum has been washed out, pour off the water and put the mass of wet stamps somewhere to dry. When dry, the stamps and paper will be easy to separate (any ones that don't are resoaked). This process is hard on stamps that have ink that runs like the 4-cent Lincolns from the 1954 Presidential set. So you will have to learn which stamps not to soak this way. This is a very efficient way to soak kiloware after you have taken the good stamps out.