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Paved with good intentions.

The Stamp Collecting Report. I'm Lloyd de Vries.

A venerable stamp company has a couple of instructional videos on You-Tube. While reaching 
out to novice and potential stamp collectors through the Internet is GOOD...some of the 
practices demonstrated in the videos aren't.

Valuable stamps should not be handled with your hands. Instead, collectors use tongs -- 
special tweezers. In both videos, a collector picks up stamps with tongs... then takes them 
from the tongs with his hands! Noooooo!

Then, in this How To Mount Stamps video, the stamps are inserted into what are called 
mounts -- special clear plastic holders with glue on the back. THEN the mounts are moistened 
and affixed to an album page. That's another mistake: The moisture could transfer to the 
mint stamp, ruining it. First you put the mount on the page, wait for it to dry, and THEN 
you insert the stamp.

The other video, on watermarks, is pretty good -- except when the collector picks up the 
stamps with his hand.

It's enough to make a collector cringe.

I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting, 
visit Virtual-Stamp-Club-dot-com.

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