We all know about mold and dampness causing damage to stamps, but what about dryness? Is using air conditioning in the home bad for stamps?


The cleanest collections we've ever seen had been stored where the humidity is low. Low humidity is why the nearly perfectly preserved human mummies from the Valley of The Kings in Egypt, and the northern Atacama Desert in Chile, exist. Very low humidity kept them nearly perfectly preserved. And it works on stamps as well as mummies. But if the humidity is too low, gummed stamps will tend to curl and eventually the gum will crack. The ideal humidty is definitely not zero, it's probably something closer to around 30%.