Standing Up my Soak Box*

I have been checking out two stamp forums lately. Stamporama is extensive but requires a registration fee after the first month. Meanwhile, over on the Stamp Community Forum, an equally extensive site awaits, at zero cost for registration. However, access to buy, sell and exchange takes 50 posts. OK, challenge accepted!

A community member commented on the daunting contents of his soak box. This resonated with me because I was not daunted, diving into the soak box and filling two five-foot paper towel sections with the results! Most of what's shown here is on-paper from stamp show purchases, and some from incoming stamp mail. First was worldwide, then my less-full Canada soak box.

As usual, I soak en masse, in this case in two Tupperware pans of warm water, then spread to dry on paper towels. Once dry, I carefully dump them off the paper towels (to black plastic tray, above) then press in large, hardcover books, then the fun begins once the flattened stamps are dumped out and sorted.

Here's my sorting hierarchy:

• stamps for my collection or further triage
• stamps for specific collectors: space, music, triangles, topicals
• stamps for envelopes of in-demand countries' duplicates for exchanges i.e. UK, Scandinavia
• stamps for the duplicates box for exchanges of worldwide
• stamps for Oxfam

*You read that right! Not standing on my soap box, though I've regularly done that and will continue to do so, sometimes preaching to the converted.