I worry a bit about all of the lighter fluid fumes I have inhaled trying to identify watermarks or removing self adhesive stamps over the years. I think my brain has deteriorated or at least that is what my wife tells me.....
Ummm . . . breathing organics, whether halogenated or not, should not be dismissed lightly. I remember using carbon tertrachloride back in the 1950's. Try and even find that stuff now. Personally, I've 'shutdown' all self-adhesive stamp removal operations until temperate weather (>60F) rears its ugly head sometime this next spring and I can get outside into a relatively well-ventilated area. It's not the orange or lemon oil used to remove the adhesive from the SA stamps (heck, that's used as a room de-odorizer), but it's the naptha I use to lift the SA stamps off the paper that is of concern.
Just get the stamp in tweezers, backside up [oo-er] and hold it under the sunshine, the watermark is then clearly visible.
just put the stamp and piece in hot water and wait about 20 seconds, the self adhesive stamp then just slides off the paper.
Gosh; you are so accurate! It is hard for us Canadians to laugh when we are bundled up in our bear skins and mukluks huddled inside our igloo! Laughing takes away the fun of it all...we much rather sit around and chew away on our blubber
I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night sweating and seeing giant spiders and I know I have to have just one more stamp. I have just one more and then before I know it it leads to another and another and ..............well as I said to 'Philatelics Annonymous'; "My name is Abominov and I have a stamp habit".
If you get a great deal of hay in a barn it sometimes spontaneously combusts, sometimes people spontaneously combust. What if you get a group of people in a barn spontaneously sorting stamps???????????
I take it that you have actually tried to remove a self Adhesive stamp by holding it under hot water for 20 seconds then sliding it off LOL Just a snippet from Wiki on the subject More recent USPS self-adhesive stamps are not readily removable from the envelope or cover backing by traditional water soaking. Some collectors of used stamps have discovered that although not readily removable by water, the self-adhesives can be removed with Bestine (a hexane solvent), Benzine (Petroleum Ether), or a natural based citrus solvent containing d-limonene (e.g., Pure Citrus Orange is an air freshener product that works for this purpose). And here you will find a nice vid link about it LOL http://secretstostampcollecting.com...ve-self-adhesive-stamps-from-envelopes-video/
