Gum Descriptors

The following abbreviations are used by us for describing the condition of gum on mint stamps we sell.

M DIST. OG: The mint stamps gum has had something that has caused the gum to appear other than never hinged. Gum present on the stamp is the original Gum which it came with.

M HR REMOVED: The gum has had a hinge removed by US and the gum has been redistributed on the back. We do this to insure no hidden thins under a HR.

MLH The Stamp still has original gum, but there is a sight disturbance of it from being previously hinged. (the HR is not on the stamp.)

MNG: Mint NO Gum. Stamp has not been cancelled, but for reasons not know, the gum has been completely removed. This has been done on some older issues by earlier dealers as the gum on some early issues was acidic an tended to destroy the stamp over the long run. The stamp could have been stuck to something in the past, and soaked off to save it also.

MNH: Gum on the stamp is just as it was issued from the post office. There has never been a hinge placed on the stamp.

MNH NATURAL GUM SKIPS: The stamp is NH, but has streak spots where there seems to be little or no gum present. An issue that is famous for this is Canal Zone C7-14. It occurs on a surprising number of pre 1940 issues. There are no issues I am aware of that it is the norm.

M OG: The stamps gum is Original Gum, but not a never hinged copy .

M PAPER GUM: Mint stamp, gum is dried and in traces on the back of the stamp. (some dealers call this Dried Gum). Usually caused by interleaving on the back of the sheets of stamps that has over the years adhered to the stamps, dried out and was later removed. Some times this leaves a waxy looking gum which is referred to WAXY GUM.

M PART OG: The gum is original but part of the stamp has no gum present on it. This often originates on stamps that had HR removed in the past, and the person removing them did not redistribute the gum back on the spot where the HR was removed from.

M REDISTRIBUTED GUM: The MINT stamp has had a blemish of some kind on the gum, which has been smoothed out to try and improve the stamps gum appearance. This is sometime done when hinges are removed also. WE describe this in that case as M HR REMOVED.