Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
10:08:09am
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I agree with Bobby, I'd soak the gum off and then you'd have a perfectly honest used stamp. Maybe someone was practicing regumming on this one? 
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Often with regumming comes reperfing and repairs. I'd check for those as well. Other than that the previous advice is spot on.
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"It's regummed!
I just need to know if value is lost in its used state"
The only way to find out for sure is to try to sell it, and see if anyone wants it.
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I would have to echo Michael's earlier caveat: Many times re-gumming was done to hide other repairs like filled thins or to make tears less visible. It really depends on the CV of the stamp as to where to be suspicious. For example, if I saw a $1 to $5 US Columbian Expo (Scott 241-245) with a re-gum I would have some serious questions. The CV for MNG is the same as Used for those stamps, so why would anyone try to remove the cancel and re-gum it? I would immediately be suspicious of a hidden repair. However, even when a re-gum seems logical (mint is several times more valuable than used), there is still a very real chance that the "doctor" is trying to hide repairs as well.
If you determine that it's just a straight re-gum, you should be able to soak it and obtain a nice used stamp. If it's a re-gum hiding repairs (detected with fluid or lighting), I think it would be more valuable as a space filler as is, and with proper disclosure, of course.
Lars
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05:53:08am
" ...You could have a $3,000.00 stamp according to the Scott Catalog, but if nobody is willing to purchase it, then it's worthless. ..."
How true, although if offered in an open bid usually someone would take a flier at $5.00. Then I'd see that preposterously low bid and despite possibly already having an example would bump the bid, via proxie bidding, entering say $50.
And then two other well heeled bidders might see my low bid and fight it out to several hundred dollars, just on the general principle that " ... He ain't a'gonna steal that $3,000.00 stamp ..."
I am reminded of a story
told by the late Herman Hurst
about an obscure rarity which,
while it pertained to coins
applies its moral to stamps
as well as other collectables.
.
It seems that a clever collector, who we could call "Bill" to simplify the tale, noticed some moderately rare coin, the key of a set, listed in an auction catalog. Attending the auction himself although looking for other bargains, Bill noticed that the bidding on that particular lot quickly came down to a contest between two wealthy collectors who, in a typical male battle of wills, each overbid significantly for the right to acquire this one coin, which must have been the final long sought after gem, needed to complete his set. By the time the final hammer dropped the winner had his gem at a price several times what it ordinarily would sell for.
.
This occurred, if Hurst was being accurate, some fifty years ( Now seventy years or so ) ago when travel to Europe was usually by liner and communications between the two continents, while available, was hardly the instantaneous news flashes we have become accustomed to.
In the story, shortly after the auction Hurst's friend, Bill, boarded one of the many luxurious vessels that plied the North Atlantic all year round for a combination European buying trip and vacation. Hurst had made several such trips himself, wandering around London, Paris and other philatelicly active cities, shipping boxes of albums of items ctivly sought after in the US and available inexpensively in Europe.
.
Back to collector Bill.
At some bourse in Europe, perhaps Paris or Vienna, or elsewhere, he came upon a seller who had the precise set of coins in pristine condition for sale at a reasonable price, slightly above market, but most importantly, the set contained an example of the key coin that had been the subject of the bidding frenzy at the auction in New York only a few weeks before. Other than that key item, the rest of the two dozen or so coins of that set were rather common and usually sold, as usual, for a fraction of the coin catalogue's optimistic listings.
I guess the mental gears engaged and began turning as a brilliant idea developed. Bill figured he would pay the somewhat higher price for the full set in Europe and when he returned to the states would seek out the collector who had lost the lot at the auction, offering him the key item at a price as close to that which he had been willing to pay on that afternoon in the sales room as he could bargain for.
After all, this collector had seemed to be more than willing that day to pay a significant premium for that particular coin.
This way, Bill would have the rest of the set, essentially free, plus any difference would help offset the cost of his European tour. And so, almost as quickly as the plan was hatched, Bill offered the bourse dealer a good price for the entire set of coins.
What could go wrong ?
.
A month or so later when Bill arrived in New York with his purchases from different sales in Europe, he learned that the collector who had bid so extravagantly but a few months before for that single coin had passed away and soon his estate manager would be placing his entire collection of rare coins ( still minus that key item. ) on the auction block itself.
Quickly shifting to plan "B" and slightly desperate, Bill contacted the other collector, thinking that there was a chance that having paid so much for the one example of this coin, perhaps he might be willing to offer a nice premium for a second example. That fellow soon replied to Bill's offer that he had no interest in the coin as but a few months ago he had filled in his set by winning one at a public auction.
.
And so, now Bill had this set, filled with fairly common coins for which he had paid a premium and would likely own for some time before he could find a buyer who was interested in the set or some single coins from it and was willing to pay enough to provide a profit.
The moral of the story has to do with the complex interplay between rarity, supply and demand. A limited supply and two wealthy determined collectors had bumped the auction price quite a bit above its natural level.
The death of one collector and the disinterest of another in buying a second example caused that bubble to burst and Hurst's friend Bill was left holding the bag ( Of coins) for some time as the Great Depression opened its trapdoors and the world had better things to do beside spend money on such trivialities.
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Dave. I don't see anything wrong with your posts. You simply asked questions and I was hoping for a response on how to ID re gummed stamps. I think the response you got was more out of line. He seemed to only care about his question to the board where it would have been a simple thing to tell us why, and then we would've learned something
This board is easy next to some others I've been involved in.
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"I was hoping for a response on how to ID re gummed stamps"
If you're just "eyeballing" the stamp to see if the gum is original or not, there are a few things to look for. It is best if you have a genuine stamp to compare against.
- The stamp has to be cleaned before new gum can be applied. The stamp may look "too clean", or the stamp image may be faded or different from a normal stamp due to the cleaning process.
- Look closely at the stamp for signs of a faint cancel. Regummers will try to clean cancels to make the stamp look unused, but some cancels may be difficult to completely remove.
- New gum will often have a different look, color and texture to it. Older gum tends to yellow due to the acid in it. New gum may be white and smooth. Yellow gum that looks new just might be.
- Older stamps may have had gum breakers. Regummed stamps will be often lack those.
- Regummed stamps may have the new gum seepage (did I spell that right?) around the edges of the perfs. Stamps are printed, the paper gummed and then perforated in that order.
- Often when a stamp is regummed, the gum is used to cover thins, or some filler paper paste is used. A dip in watermark fluid, or hold the stamp up to a light may reveal defects.
- Often when a stamp is regummed, it is reperfed as well. Use a magnifying glass to look at an older perfed stamp. You will see the ends of the perfs have plenty of paper threads. Reperfed stamps have clean cut perfs with little to no paper threads along the new perfs. Note that the paper threads are often washed away during the cleaning process prior to regumming. Any older stamp with clear perfs should be suspect.
- Any older stamp that has a high catalog value should be closely inspected for regumming and reperfing. It is very common. Also note that the crooks know that never hinged stamps are the stamps most suspected, so they are hinging the stamps to try to trick collectors into thinking that hinged stamps are all right.
The best thing you can do to protect yourself is when you want to purchase a valuable stamp, get a certificate first.
That's some of it. Hope it helps.
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If you want to really get into it - this may be the authority on the subject
Unfortunately it is out of print & copies are VERY expensive
I have the CD version that you can buy for under $20
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Michael, thanks for the info. One more question if I may... on reperforating a stamp. Are stamps reperfed to fix a straight edge? Or to change it to a scarcer perf variety? Wouldn't the stamp be noticibly smaller if the issued perfs were cut off and then new ones cut closer to the design?
And the big question.. how is this reperfing done? I don't see someone hand cutting them one at a time, is there equipment to do this?
Sorry for the beginners questions. I've been away from this for 30 or more years, and when I was a collector in the 1970s, I didn't have the money to buy stamps worth faking! 
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Benfranklin1902 said,
"Wouldn't the stamp be noticibly smaller if the issued perfs were cut off and then new ones cut closer to the design?"
An elderly collector here in Vancouver told me that back in the 1950s, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who had worked in stamp production, hadn't been able to get a job. To kill time and make some money, he created "varieties" of stamps to sell to local dealers. To create imperforate stamps, he would trim the perfs of a normal stamp and then literally hammer the paper to spread the paper fibres horizontally. I assume he would then trim the stamp. The paper would be thinner, but not so much that a casual observer would notice.
He didn't lie about the origin of the stamps, but the problem, of course, is that if the stamps weren't identified permanently as bogus, they would enter the stamp marketplace as actual varieties. Some may be on eBay as I write!
That's a good question about creating new perforations. I'd like to know the answer to that too.
Bob
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Ben ranklin1002 also said,
"I didn't have the money to buy stamps worth faking!"
I've mentioned in other threads that my stamp club has twice invited a local expert on bogus stamps to present programs. On both occasions, he mentioned that a common myth is that only valuable stamps are forged. Not so, he says. Even very common stamps can be found to have been forged or tampered with to add to their value.
The packet trade was no doubt a ready market for bogus stamps. I understand from another specialist I've spoken to that the printing plates for some of the postwar stamps of Japan ended up in Hungary, where they were reprinted ad nauseum, but at great profit. When you think about it, a postage stamp must have about the highest mark-up of any commodity you can think of. What must one modern stamp cost to print, compared to the "ticket" price, not to mention the prices that dealers often as for and get from collectors.
Bob
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"One more question if I may... on reperforating a stamp. Are stamps reperfed to fix a straight edge? Or to change it to a scarcer perf variety? Wouldn't the stamp be noticeably smaller if the issued perfs were cut off and then new ones cut closer to the design?"
The simple answer to all of your questions is "yes".
Regarding the "noticeably smaller", the crooks will use stamps that have wide margins, like straight edges, and most importantly, imperf stamps (2 cent Washingtons from the Washington-Franklin series). Some of the reperfed may be the same, slightly small in paper size (or even larger as is often the case with faked coils), but the design is left intact, which is the trick on the collector.
The crooks use paper perforating machines/devices to create their fakes. The following links are examples. The second one in particular will show you how easy it is to do.
https://youtu.be/AdUI4oCIFJg
https://youtu.be/gaCn7HWJ1YU
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Here is a good page on re-gumming.
http://www.hgitner.com/regummed-stamps.html
(Modified by Moderator on 2015-03-24 01:00:10)
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And one on re=perfing.
http://www.hgitner.com/reperfing.html
(Modified by Moderator on 2015-03-24 01:00:45)
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I am curious as to what several people have said here. If a stamp has no gum, is it automatically used? Say you have a mint stamp that gets wet and all gum is removed, is it not still unused, but no longer mint?
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It depends.
19th century, and probably early 20th century often the catalogs give a value for unused without gum. If no value for unused without gum, then take about 50% off the unused value, but no less than the used value.
For modern stamps, if the gum is gone, then you basically have to value it as used, unless the unused value is lower. However, then you still must discount the stamp for not having gum. Big discount for modern stamps that are unused but hinged and/or are unused but have no gum.
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Although I value the printed side of stamps more than the gummed (or previously gummed, or ungummed) side, I have a knee-jerk reaction to mint stamps that have lost their gum. They are neither mint nor used, neither fish nor fowl.
One my "unused" stamps is Italy #341, the high value of the Centenary of the Military Medal of Valor set issued in 1934 and showing a medic at work on a wounded soldier.
I believe that it's the earliest stamp to show a military medic. I bought it as a mint stamp, failed to look at the back when it arrived, and only noticed several months or even a few years later that it had no gum. Since then, I just can't be happy with it! Ironically, the used value is twice the mint value (U.S. $12 for mint, $24 for used in my 2004 Scott Classic catalogue. It is, however, one of those stamps that Scott indicates was not used enough postally to establish a "true" value. In any event, I'd really like to find a mint never-hinged copy, not to mention a legitimately used one.
Bob
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Wow! Thanks to all for the links to tutorial about both regumming and reperfing. I've only gotten through half of them, but I am much smarter than I was yesterday!
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
17 Mar 2015
10:08:09am
In my opinion, a "used" stamp which has been re-gummed was most likely an effort by someone to pass the stamp off as mint to an unsuspecting buyer. This would "taint" the stamp for me. However, whether the stamp is "used" or "unused," the fact is was re-gummed should have no effect on its value (that value being for a "used" stamp or an "unused, no gum" stamp). My advice is to soak off the gum and offer it as it either "used" or as "unused, no gum," whatever the true condition of the stamp in question is.
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
I agree with Bobby, I'd soak the gum off and then you'd have a perfectly honest used stamp. Maybe someone was practicing regumming on this one?
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
Often with regumming comes reperfing and repairs. I'd check for those as well. Other than that the previous advice is spot on.
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
"It's regummed!
I just need to know if value is lost in its used state"
The only way to find out for sure is to try to sell it, and see if anyone wants it.
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
I would have to echo Michael's earlier caveat: Many times re-gumming was done to hide other repairs like filled thins or to make tears less visible. It really depends on the CV of the stamp as to where to be suspicious. For example, if I saw a $1 to $5 US Columbian Expo (Scott 241-245) with a re-gum I would have some serious questions. The CV for MNG is the same as Used for those stamps, so why would anyone try to remove the cancel and re-gum it? I would immediately be suspicious of a hidden repair. However, even when a re-gum seems logical (mint is several times more valuable than used), there is still a very real chance that the "doctor" is trying to hide repairs as well.
If you determine that it's just a straight re-gum, you should be able to soak it and obtain a nice used stamp. If it's a re-gum hiding repairs (detected with fluid or lighting), I think it would be more valuable as a space filler as is, and with proper disclosure, of course.
Lars
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
19 Mar 2015
05:53:08am
re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
" ...You could have a $3,000.00 stamp according to the Scott Catalog, but if nobody is willing to purchase it, then it's worthless. ..."
How true, although if offered in an open bid usually someone would take a flier at $5.00. Then I'd see that preposterously low bid and despite possibly already having an example would bump the bid, via proxie bidding, entering say $50.
And then two other well heeled bidders might see my low bid and fight it out to several hundred dollars, just on the general principle that " ... He ain't a'gonna steal that $3,000.00 stamp ..."
I am reminded of a story
told by the late Herman Hurst
about an obscure rarity which,
while it pertained to coins
applies its moral to stamps
as well as other collectables.
.
It seems that a clever collector, who we could call "Bill" to simplify the tale, noticed some moderately rare coin, the key of a set, listed in an auction catalog. Attending the auction himself although looking for other bargains, Bill noticed that the bidding on that particular lot quickly came down to a contest between two wealthy collectors who, in a typical male battle of wills, each overbid significantly for the right to acquire this one coin, which must have been the final long sought after gem, needed to complete his set. By the time the final hammer dropped the winner had his gem at a price several times what it ordinarily would sell for.
.
This occurred, if Hurst was being accurate, some fifty years ( Now seventy years or so ) ago when travel to Europe was usually by liner and communications between the two continents, while available, was hardly the instantaneous news flashes we have become accustomed to.
In the story, shortly after the auction Hurst's friend, Bill, boarded one of the many luxurious vessels that plied the North Atlantic all year round for a combination European buying trip and vacation. Hurst had made several such trips himself, wandering around London, Paris and other philatelicly active cities, shipping boxes of albums of items ctivly sought after in the US and available inexpensively in Europe.
.
Back to collector Bill.
At some bourse in Europe, perhaps Paris or Vienna, or elsewhere, he came upon a seller who had the precise set of coins in pristine condition for sale at a reasonable price, slightly above market, but most importantly, the set contained an example of the key coin that had been the subject of the bidding frenzy at the auction in New York only a few weeks before. Other than that key item, the rest of the two dozen or so coins of that set were rather common and usually sold, as usual, for a fraction of the coin catalogue's optimistic listings.
I guess the mental gears engaged and began turning as a brilliant idea developed. Bill figured he would pay the somewhat higher price for the full set in Europe and when he returned to the states would seek out the collector who had lost the lot at the auction, offering him the key item at a price as close to that which he had been willing to pay on that afternoon in the sales room as he could bargain for.
After all, this collector had seemed to be more than willing that day to pay a significant premium for that particular coin.
This way, Bill would have the rest of the set, essentially free, plus any difference would help offset the cost of his European tour. And so, almost as quickly as the plan was hatched, Bill offered the bourse dealer a good price for the entire set of coins.
What could go wrong ?
.
A month or so later when Bill arrived in New York with his purchases from different sales in Europe, he learned that the collector who had bid so extravagantly but a few months before for that single coin had passed away and soon his estate manager would be placing his entire collection of rare coins ( still minus that key item. ) on the auction block itself.
Quickly shifting to plan "B" and slightly desperate, Bill contacted the other collector, thinking that there was a chance that having paid so much for the one example of this coin, perhaps he might be willing to offer a nice premium for a second example. That fellow soon replied to Bill's offer that he had no interest in the coin as but a few months ago he had filled in his set by winning one at a public auction.
.
And so, now Bill had this set, filled with fairly common coins for which he had paid a premium and would likely own for some time before he could find a buyer who was interested in the set or some single coins from it and was willing to pay enough to provide a profit.
The moral of the story has to do with the complex interplay between rarity, supply and demand. A limited supply and two wealthy determined collectors had bumped the auction price quite a bit above its natural level.
The death of one collector and the disinterest of another in buying a second example caused that bubble to burst and Hurst's friend Bill was left holding the bag ( Of coins) for some time as the Great Depression opened its trapdoors and the world had better things to do beside spend money on such trivialities.
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
Dave. I don't see anything wrong with your posts. You simply asked questions and I was hoping for a response on how to ID re gummed stamps. I think the response you got was more out of line. He seemed to only care about his question to the board where it would have been a simple thing to tell us why, and then we would've learned something
This board is easy next to some others I've been involved in.
Login to Like
this post
re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
"I was hoping for a response on how to ID re gummed stamps"
If you're just "eyeballing" the stamp to see if the gum is original or not, there are a few things to look for. It is best if you have a genuine stamp to compare against.
- The stamp has to be cleaned before new gum can be applied. The stamp may look "too clean", or the stamp image may be faded or different from a normal stamp due to the cleaning process.
- Look closely at the stamp for signs of a faint cancel. Regummers will try to clean cancels to make the stamp look unused, but some cancels may be difficult to completely remove.
- New gum will often have a different look, color and texture to it. Older gum tends to yellow due to the acid in it. New gum may be white and smooth. Yellow gum that looks new just might be.
- Older stamps may have had gum breakers. Regummed stamps will be often lack those.
- Regummed stamps may have the new gum seepage (did I spell that right?) around the edges of the perfs. Stamps are printed, the paper gummed and then perforated in that order.
- Often when a stamp is regummed, the gum is used to cover thins, or some filler paper paste is used. A dip in watermark fluid, or hold the stamp up to a light may reveal defects.
- Often when a stamp is regummed, it is reperfed as well. Use a magnifying glass to look at an older perfed stamp. You will see the ends of the perfs have plenty of paper threads. Reperfed stamps have clean cut perfs with little to no paper threads along the new perfs. Note that the paper threads are often washed away during the cleaning process prior to regumming. Any older stamp with clear perfs should be suspect.
- Any older stamp that has a high catalog value should be closely inspected for regumming and reperfing. It is very common. Also note that the crooks know that never hinged stamps are the stamps most suspected, so they are hinging the stamps to try to trick collectors into thinking that hinged stamps are all right.
The best thing you can do to protect yourself is when you want to purchase a valuable stamp, get a certificate first.
That's some of it. Hope it helps.
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01:45:59pm
re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
If you want to really get into it - this may be the authority on the subject
Unfortunately it is out of print & copies are VERY expensive
I have the CD version that you can buy for under $20
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
Michael, thanks for the info. One more question if I may... on reperforating a stamp. Are stamps reperfed to fix a straight edge? Or to change it to a scarcer perf variety? Wouldn't the stamp be noticibly smaller if the issued perfs were cut off and then new ones cut closer to the design?
And the big question.. how is this reperfing done? I don't see someone hand cutting them one at a time, is there equipment to do this?
Sorry for the beginners questions. I've been away from this for 30 or more years, and when I was a collector in the 1970s, I didn't have the money to buy stamps worth faking!
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
Benfranklin1902 said,
"Wouldn't the stamp be noticibly smaller if the issued perfs were cut off and then new ones cut closer to the design?"
An elderly collector here in Vancouver told me that back in the 1950s, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who had worked in stamp production, hadn't been able to get a job. To kill time and make some money, he created "varieties" of stamps to sell to local dealers. To create imperforate stamps, he would trim the perfs of a normal stamp and then literally hammer the paper to spread the paper fibres horizontally. I assume he would then trim the stamp. The paper would be thinner, but not so much that a casual observer would notice.
He didn't lie about the origin of the stamps, but the problem, of course, is that if the stamps weren't identified permanently as bogus, they would enter the stamp marketplace as actual varieties. Some may be on eBay as I write!
That's a good question about creating new perforations. I'd like to know the answer to that too.
Bob
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
Ben ranklin1002 also said,
"I didn't have the money to buy stamps worth faking!"
I've mentioned in other threads that my stamp club has twice invited a local expert on bogus stamps to present programs. On both occasions, he mentioned that a common myth is that only valuable stamps are forged. Not so, he says. Even very common stamps can be found to have been forged or tampered with to add to their value.
The packet trade was no doubt a ready market for bogus stamps. I understand from another specialist I've spoken to that the printing plates for some of the postwar stamps of Japan ended up in Hungary, where they were reprinted ad nauseum, but at great profit. When you think about it, a postage stamp must have about the highest mark-up of any commodity you can think of. What must one modern stamp cost to print, compared to the "ticket" price, not to mention the prices that dealers often as for and get from collectors.
Bob
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
"One more question if I may... on reperforating a stamp. Are stamps reperfed to fix a straight edge? Or to change it to a scarcer perf variety? Wouldn't the stamp be noticeably smaller if the issued perfs were cut off and then new ones cut closer to the design?"
The simple answer to all of your questions is "yes".
Regarding the "noticeably smaller", the crooks will use stamps that have wide margins, like straight edges, and most importantly, imperf stamps (2 cent Washingtons from the Washington-Franklin series). Some of the reperfed may be the same, slightly small in paper size (or even larger as is often the case with faked coils), but the design is left intact, which is the trick on the collector.
The crooks use paper perforating machines/devices to create their fakes. The following links are examples. The second one in particular will show you how easy it is to do.
https://youtu.be/AdUI4oCIFJg
https://youtu.be/gaCn7HWJ1YU
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
Here is a good page on re-gumming.
http://www.hgitner.com/regummed-stamps.html
(Modified by Moderator on 2015-03-24 01:00:10)
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
And one on re=perfing.
http://www.hgitner.com/reperfing.html
(Modified by Moderator on 2015-03-24 01:00:45)
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
I am curious as to what several people have said here. If a stamp has no gum, is it automatically used? Say you have a mint stamp that gets wet and all gum is removed, is it not still unused, but no longer mint?
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
It depends.
19th century, and probably early 20th century often the catalogs give a value for unused without gum. If no value for unused without gum, then take about 50% off the unused value, but no less than the used value.
For modern stamps, if the gum is gone, then you basically have to value it as used, unless the unused value is lower. However, then you still must discount the stamp for not having gum. Big discount for modern stamps that are unused but hinged and/or are unused but have no gum.
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
Although I value the printed side of stamps more than the gummed (or previously gummed, or ungummed) side, I have a knee-jerk reaction to mint stamps that have lost their gum. They are neither mint nor used, neither fish nor fowl.
One my "unused" stamps is Italy #341, the high value of the Centenary of the Military Medal of Valor set issued in 1934 and showing a medic at work on a wounded soldier.
I believe that it's the earliest stamp to show a military medic. I bought it as a mint stamp, failed to look at the back when it arrived, and only noticed several months or even a few years later that it had no gum. Since then, I just can't be happy with it! Ironically, the used value is twice the mint value (U.S. $12 for mint, $24 for used in my 2004 Scott Classic catalogue. It is, however, one of those stamps that Scott indicates was not used enough postally to establish a "true" value. In any event, I'd really like to find a mint never-hinged copy, not to mention a legitimately used one.
Bob
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re: Re-gummed Stamp Value
Wow! Thanks to all for the links to tutorial about both regumming and reperfing. I've only gotten through half of them, but I am much smarter than I was yesterday!
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