Are Water-Activated ("Lick and Stick") stamps dying a slow death? Part 2 of 2 Parts.

Let's revisit the issue that there are many more self-adhesive stamps now being used than water-activated, lick-and-stick stamps.

One problem that this issue raises is the fact that many more self-adhesive stamps, and many fewer water-canactivated stamps, will be seen in postally used stamp accumulations and mixtures. This imbalance will cause postally used lick and stick stamps to become much harder to find. But is this truly a problem or not?

Will the imbalance result in increased future values for those postally used water-activated stamps that can be found? Will they have a higher catalogue value than "equivalent" self-adhesive stamps that are much more readily available? No one knows as yet, but we predict that a higher catalogue value for water-activated stamps is a distinct possibility.

For example, we can easily envision a stamp that has two varieties - one self-adhesive and one water-activated - where the future catalogue value of the self-adhesive is 20 cents (or whatever the minimum value of popular stamp catalogues is at the time) while the future value of the much less common water-activated variety is 2 or 3 or even more times as much.

Are Water-Activated ("Lick and Stick") stamps dying a slow death? Part 1 of 2 Parts.

Since the advent of self-adhesive stamps, usage of water-activated stamps has severely declined. In the old days, self-adhesives didn't exist and people were accustomed to licking stamps in order to use them to post mail. Water-activated stamps were the only game in town, and no one minding using them.

Now, however, self-adhesive stamps are in the picture. It seems like there are far more self-adhesives being produced by countries than water-activated stamps. No doubt, this is because of customer feedback indicating their preferences to the USPS and other countries' postal authorities. Even with stamps that are available in both self-adhesive and water-activated varieties, postally used copies of the lick and stick version are drastically under-represented in stamp accumulations.

Self adhesive stamps truly are much easier and much quicker to put on covers, but some of them can be almost impossible to soak of their paper without causing extreme damage. Collectors of postally used stamps are accordingly having a very difficult time in trying to find some of the newer issue self-adhesive stamps that are off-paper but still in collectible condition.
Those stamps will have to be collected still on paper.

We mourn the apparent slow death of lick and stick stamps.