The best thing to do with your stamps once they're soaked off the paper is to put them in a drying book (most dealers and Subway etc stock them) to
dry. They'll dry flat and not have the wrinkles you get from paper towel. A large drying book will dry about 1000 stamps a day and you can use it
over and over again (though it will eventually get grubby from the various muck that is on the face of most used stamps). I use Desert Magic drying
books though I'm sure there are others. You could probably make one yourself, too - a sheet of flexible plastic to put the stamp glue side down on
and a couple of sheets of white blotting paper to put on top of the stamps. Put the whole lot under a phone book and voila - a load of dry stamps.

As for the debate on hinged or unhinged mint, first off, they're your stamps so put them in your album however you like - it'll be the person who
sells the collection who will suffer financially. I don't see too much point putting a 2 cent stamp in a 10 cent mount. A $1,000 stamp is a
different matter entirely.

Cheers - John Mycroft

On 5/20/2011 7:55 PM, Chris wrote:
Well, I got my albums in today so I'm about ready to get started
transfering from the 50 year old book to the new ones. Question though
on removing the old hinges, what's the best and safest (to the stamp)
way to do this? I've also fogotten the best way to remove stamps from
the portion of the envelope they're on. I know to soak them and I seem
to remember that after soaking for awhile they'd just slide off and I'd
place them on a paper towel to dry or is my memory faulty?

Chris