Taking Care of Your Collection: Watch the Sun!

Do you love your stamps? Do you take them out and look at them everyday? You can’t see them in the dark, though, so what do you do? You probably bring them towards the light of the day because nothing lets the ink shine quite like all natural sunlight, and you’re just enjoying your priceless collection. Nothing harmful in that, right? Wrong! You are causing your stamp collection to, quite literally, fade away. It’s not your fault because you didn’t know any better, but you really need to heed the following advice.

Light can be so harmful to your paper based stamp collection, especially UV light, which, without your knowledge, is damaging it little by little, each time you have it out. Even just the casual sunlight through your room’s window is slowly, but surely, fading the ink on your stamp collection. UV concentrated light bulbs are especially harmful to the stamps due to its intense focus of UV light. These light bulbs are used to test authenticity of stamps when being priced, so a little now and then, wouldn’t do damage. Just avoid displaying your collection without proper protective covering.

It would be quite boring to own a stamp collection, if you couldn’t even look at it. It’s fine to do so, but realize that ink fades over time, if you are not careful. So, treat your stamps like the delicate flowers they are, and don’t give them too much sun.