Are Cto's Mnh

I finally got around to my MNH International

in some of my packets I'm finding that nice neat tiny cancel in the corner of Mint looking gum on never hinged stamps. they look like they walked out of the post office, I'm assuming these are referred to as CTO's? are they considered used even with mint gum?

Edwin

Yes, that's the dreaded CTO. Never postally used, just cancelled.

Some people treat them the same as used stamps, others don't.

They're really all a category of their own.

Many people (myself included) classify CTO as a separate category. They definitely are not mint and the are not POSTALLY used. Many countries, especially Eastern Europe, disposed of old stock by CTO. In many cases the values listed for used are for postally used and CTO have lower values.

Be aware of another level of hiearchy,
the "printed on" cancel, used by postal issuers
for display and propaganda purposes.

Australia is a big offender.
I assume this practice reduces the examples to Cinderellas.

Indeed, you'll often find that those nice, neat CTO cancellations were made at the printers. The CTO stamps in fact never went anywhere near the country that supposedly issued them. Or, as in the case of Australia a few years ago, they may have been printed locally, but the printers still printed the cancellations onto the stamps; the closest those stamps got to 'postal' was when they were sold through the Philatelic Bureau.

so your saying that a CTO mint looking stamp that has gum and not postally used is worth even less then a used stamp.

not somewhere between mint and used?

Edwin, it really is a case-by-case matter. Sometimes CTO will be worth the same as used - usually when genuinely postally used are rare to barely existent (as with some of the Sand Dune countries); other times, as with the Australian issues I mentioned, CTO are probably worth less. You'll need to study the catalogue you're using carefully for clues.

Sometimes, it takes a specialist to pick the difference. The two stamps below are from the 1931 pictorial set from Charkhari State in India. The first stamp is CTO, and basically completely worthless. The second stamp was actually postally used; if I was selling it, and I'm not, I'd ask maybe $50 for it:



You won't find the difference between CTO and postally used in any catalogue. You just have to know.

It all depends on the issue and the country.

In Australia from 1913 the Post Office issued Specimen Sets for sale to collectors. The lower values, up to 5/- were CTO, with the higher values overprinted with the word "SPECIMEN". All of these CTO stamps were produced in Melbourne, so have a Melbourne cds with various dates of issue. There are some other CTO stamps from this era that would appear to be cancelled per favour (ie, don't have the Melbourne cds) but they're rare.

As to pricing of Australian CTO stamps, it varies widely. They're priced separately in the Australian Specialist Catalogue. For the Kangaroo issues they're mostly priced between the used and MLH prices. But there are many cases were they're lower than used (in cases were postally used copies are hard to find) and also cases were CTO is valued more than MNH! So it all depends on the issue and can't really be generalised. As Russ said they're usually classified as their own category.

Balf

I always refer to CTO stamps as 'stamps in limbo'. They are neither mint, nor are they postally used. They are definately a post office entitie's gimmick to get more money into their coffers.

This is why I prefer commercially used any day against CTO.

My opinion of course

Chimo

Bujutsu