Whilst speaking of albums, it will be well to point out that stamps should never be fixed to more than one side of a page. If both faces are used, the stamps will rub against each other and also catch one with another.
Before the specimens are placed in the album, each should be carefully examined, and cleaned, if necessary. When paper is adhering to the backs, it should be removed. This unsticking process is easily performed when the specimen is immersed in a bowl of hot water, but, unfortunately, many stamps will be utterly ruined if even a trace of moisture is allowed to come in contact with their colours. No rule can be given as to which stamps spoil and which do not when treated with a hot bath, but it is safe to say that valuable specimens suffer considerably, whilst common varieties emerge from the ordeal unscathed. Perhaps this is just a matter of natural contrariness.
To be on the safe side, however, no stamp should be plunged into hot water. Cheap varieties may well be floated on the surface of warm water, but the rarer kinds must not be subjected to even this treatment; they should be placed face upwards on a sheet of wet blotting-paper, and left until the adhering paper can be peeled off without an effort. After the under-surface of a stamp has been cleaned, it should be pressed between two sheets of dry blotting-paper and carefully dried. If it seems liable to cockle or is creased in any way, it is a good plan to flatten it out by means of a warm, though not hot, iron, the stamp being protected by three or four thicknesses of white blotting-paper.
Fixing the stamps to the album is the next operation. On no account should the under-surface be gummed all over and the whole stamp stuck down to the page of the hook. The collection will need constant rearranging, certain specimens will have to make way for more perfect copies, and so on; this will be quite impossible unless hinges are used. These contrivances are thin but tough pieces of paper, approximately one by three-quarters of an inch in size, and gummed on one surface. They cost about sixpence per thousand.
1 Indian stamp used by Chinese Expeditionary Force 2 Great Britain: Army Official 3 India: On Her Majesty's Service 4 Indian stamp used in Patiala 5 North Borneo stamp used after institution of British Protectorate 6 Indian stamp of 1/2 anna converted to 1/4 anna 7 Great Britain: Inland Revenue 8 Bulgaria: Change of value 9 Bermuda 1s. value converted to 1/4 d. 10 Portugal stamp surcharged "Republic"]