| Author |
 Topic  |
|
King Conn
Valued Member
United States
90 Posts |
 Posted 01/23/2010 7:21 pm
|
Curious: The five stamps at the top of the page are very carefully cancelled, and they have their original untouched gum. Do dealers get deals an purchases of this type since the stamps will never be used for postage?
Conn
|
|
Send note to staff
|
|
|
|
|
nr-notrare
Pillar Of The Community
USA
1881 Posts |
Posted 01/23/2010 7:38 pm
|
Hi King Conn.....
CTO's.....canceled to order......worth less than used in almost all cases. Basicly sold to dealers at a discount as space fillers of hi-vals or in cases where used are hard to find........you'll find notes about them all through Scott.....some countries actually apply the cancel during the printing process. Many are produced simply as income without any intention of them ever being available as real postage.
|
|
Send note to staff  |
|
|
King Conn
Valued Member
United States
90 Posts |
Posted 01/23/2010 8:04 pm
|
Gee nr-notrare I ask you not to tell me that (in hind site). I must have a dozen more of those little suckers. Oh well live and learn, and am I ever learning a lot on this forum.
Seriously thanks for the information.
Conn
|
| Send note to staff |
|
|
nr-notrare
Pillar Of The Community
USA
1881 Posts |
Posted 01/23/2010 8:12 pm
|
Conn....
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news........but some countries started producing CTO's about 1870-1880's.
|
|
| Send note to staff |
|
|
nic
Pillar Of The Community
Philippines
503 Posts |
|
|
KirkS
Pillar Of The Community
United States
1180 Posts |
Posted 01/23/2010 8:47 pm
|
Tom:
If I soak a CTO so it has no gum, would you still be able to recognize it as a CTO or could I fool you into thinking it was postally used?
KirkS
|
| Send note to staff |
|
|
danstamps54
Valued Member
182 Posts |
Posted 01/23/2010 8:59 pm
|
I collect East German stamps, DDR. They frequently made CTO stamps to get hard currency from the West. I treat *any* DDR stamp off cover or off piece as a CTO...
Kirk, soaking it wouldn't make a difference to me!
Dan
|
| Send note to staff |
|
|
funcitypapa
Valued Member
United States
85 Posts |
Posted 01/23/2010 10:17 pm
|
Cto's have the same characteristic: a very neat corner cancel usually gummed
|
| Send note to staff |
|
|
philb
Pillar Of The Community
USA
4601 Posts |
|
|
danstamps54
Valued Member
182 Posts |
|
|
Quanah
Valued Member
83 Posts |
Posted 01/24/2010 01:24 am
|
Are the missing "Sperrwert" stamps sold individually or do you need to buy the entire set to get the missing high value?
Didn't all the Warsaw Pact countries do the same (like Bulgaria whose CTO's are at the top of this thread)? I seem to come across a lot of these 1970's (+/-) sets often missing one or two high value stamps from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, etc.
The "Dunes" (Yemen, UAE: Ajman, etc.) really stretched the term "postage stamp" with their topical releases starting in the 1960's...so much that Scott only lists a few.
In the 1970's the big stamp houses would send glassines of these CTO sets for preview and I remember buying some to stuff in a Harris Standard Album. Within the past 5 years I sold off most these stamps except for DDR. Since DDR is now back in Germany I like having a volume of DDR to go with my Scott Specialty German collection.
I'm finding that when entering a new country collection I don't want to start cheap and just get all the commons because I seem to rebuy them all once I get to the point where I'm striving to fill holes (either buying sets for the missing high values or buying other collections to beef up mine.
I haven't given up on those eastern countries, but I would like to better understand how to identify pre-1940 CTO vs. postally used. Albania, for example is a country of current interest up to 1938.
|
Edited by Quanah - 01/24/2010 01:27 am |
| Send note to staff |
|
|
David Giles
Pillar Of The Community
Canada
1755 Posts |
Posted 01/24/2010 10:39 am
|
There is now a demand for many of the Communist Bloc nations CTO'd stamps from the 1950s-1970s... topical collectors are looking for them and driving up the price!
One man's trash is another man's treasure!
David
|
| Send note to staff |
|
|
KirkS
Pillar Of The Community
United States
1180 Posts |
|
|
danstamps54
Valued Member
182 Posts |
|
|
danstamps54
Valued Member
182 Posts |
|
|
Quanah
Valued Member
83 Posts |
Posted 01/24/2010 12:29 pm
|
Is there a way to know the difference between a neat cancel w/o gum and a soaked CTO?
I have just assumed that if it's a known CTO issue with a neat cancel then it's probably a CTO. That is what lead me to assume the Netherlands stamp below from 1906 is a CTO:
THere are volume producing CTO countries from the 1960's and on that clearly seem to target topical collectors issuing stamps with little relationship to their country but strong fit for topical collectors (Disney characters, Comic book characters, US baseball players, etc.). I have thought about a topical collection (art, ships, etc.) but get turned off thinking about having these CTO's drive the bulk of the content because it just seems too much like a sticker album, however, I do get interested in CTO's of themes that are educational on the country (i.e. Albanian stamps of Albanian mosiacs, ancient art from Yugoslavia, etc.). I became more interested in the CTO's of Albania (for example) when organizing them into a profile of the country and eleminating any topics not related to their country (i.e. animals, ships, space, people, events not providing a strong representation of their country...this got tricky because I don't know if a Cosmonaut or animal is Albanian w/o some investigation.
This (mint--not CTO) stamp of Quanah Parker, for example, would be of interest if produced in North America but coming from a CTO happy African country doesn't really seem to fit.
|
Edited by Quanah - 01/24/2010 12:58 pm |
| Send note to staff |
|
|
Topic |
|
Welcome guest, we're glad you're here but right now you cannot interact with other members. Register Now for Free and you can be posting in 5 minutes!
Don't forget our orphans on Unanswered Topics.