Stamp Tongs - An Essential Stamp Collecting Tool




Stamp tongs are probably the most important tool that a stamp collector can own. Beginning collectors can, in fact, get by for some time without any other stamp tools. More tools (such as a watermark kit, for example) will be necessary eventually, but for now let's just talk about tongs.



Stamp tongs are used to handle stamps instead of picking them up with the fingers. Don't ever pick up stamps with your fingers, as you'll be likely to leave oils or fingerprints on the stamps. And its easy to crease an old stamp by picking it up that way. Collectors have been using stamp tongs to avoid these potential damaging problems since the early days of stamp collecting.



Stamp tongs are ordinary in appearance and they closely resemble the tweezers you may keep in your medicine cabinet. But don't ever confuse the two, or you'll be sorry. One way to tell the difference: the insides of the blades of tongs are very smoothly polished, while the insides of the blades of tweezers are ridged or almost corrugated. Stamp tongs also have rounded, polished tips while standard tweezers have pointed edges that can pincture or cut into stamps. Tongs are made the way they are in order to protect stamps - the ridges inside regular tweezers could easily damage stamps by leaving a mark on them, especially if the weather is very hot and humid and the stamps have full gum. The polished, rounded tips of tongs similarly protect stamps from being punctured or scratched.



Tongs are available in a variety of blade shapes: rounded tips, spade tips and pointed tips (sometimes called "lethal tips," presumably because an unsteady hand using this type could be lethal to a stamp). and are also available in a couple of different lengths. Which type of stamp tongs a collector uses is largely a matter of individual preference. The pointed tip type are more maneuverable and slide easily underneath a stamp on a flat surface, such as a tabletop. The spade tips provide a firmer grasp of the stamp and are good for holding larger stamps or stamp multiples such as stamp blocks, strips or pairs.



We highly recommend using storage cases for stamp tongs. The case doesn't need to be elaborate, fancy or expensive - in fact a perfectly functional tong case can be purchased for as little as a dollar or two. Cases help prevent scrapes, scratches and bends in the tips of tongs, and so the case itself also protects your stamps. If your tongs are damaged in any way, no matter how minor, replace them before using them again. Tongs are very inexpensive, usually costing somewhere between $3 - $7, so replacing them is not a hardship.