Until about 1950, philatelists were quite content hinging their stamps. The first stamp mounts in the United Stateswere Crystal Mounts, marketed by the H E Harris Company. They were not created because collectors wanted (or could be convinced they wanted, which is they same thing) a better way to mount their stamps. Rather Crystal Mounts were really a pain to use and were marketed solely to add a non-stamp item to the Harris line. Harris found he made more money from albums and mounts than he could from stamps. Crystal Mounts were clear acetate strips that collectors wrapped around their stamps and then cut the mounts to the desired size. Stamp mounts have always had two problems- the problem of height and the problem of horizontal and vertical.
Harris’s solution to the height problem was to make the mounts of variable height so that you folded the top of the mount around the stamp and then moistened the gummed top to mount your stamp in your album. It was not a very good solution. Mounting tended to be looser than most collectors desired and many collectors resorted to putting little pieces of Scotch Tape at the ends of their mounts to keep their stamps firmly within the mount so that they would not fall out when the stamp album was paged through. This has been a philatelic disaster. Until about 1980, when the formula for the adhesive was changed, Scotch Tape would yellow with age and stain the stamps irreparably. Literally millions of dollars worth of stamps have been ruined in this way, and if the Harris Company were still around, they may well have had to defend themselves from the largest philatelic class action suit in history. Showguard, Hawid, and Scott Mounts eliminate this problem by making the height of each mount fixed so that the fit is better. This solves the movement within the mount problem, but it means many sizes of mounts are necessary. Crystal Mounts one size fits all approach didn’t work, but it was at least an attempt to be economical.
The other problem with this first generation of mounts was the horizontal and vertical problem. Again the one size of Crystal Mounts meant that tape needed to be used when mounting a vertically formatted philatelic item. Most US commemoratives are horizontal in orientation but the occasional vertical stamp presented a real challenge that required using copious amounts of tape. The modern mount makers have again applied the “one size does not fit all” solution to this problem, and, except for expense, modern mounts are attractive and safe.
But cost does matter. It is very difficult to buy hinges anymore, but hinges made stamp collecting affordable and allowed people to mount hundreds of stamps in an evening easily and neatly and in a way where new or better specimens could replace the old in your albums without damaging the albums themselves. Change is not always progress. From the standpoint of ease of use, cost, and speed, the modern mount is no improvement on the older stamp hinge. It is a pity that the 1950