Question -Mei Lanfang

Hi everyone

one more beautiful set of stamps from china- Mei lanfang. these CTO stamps cost anywhere between 150-250 dollars. I wonder why people are after CTOs rather than going for mint or used stamps.Any reasons ??

Hello jagsp, I have seen CTO mentioned on other forums. What are CTO's. By the way, that's a nice lookinggroup of stamps.
Thanks
david

Stamps of China mostly from the 60-70-80 period seem to all be going through the roof. Recent auctions have many selling at 5x and more of catalog and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with quantity or rareity. Assumptions that I've read is in a nutshell the chinese economy is one of the best worldwide and simply there is disposible income like never before so the demand and ability to compete financialy at auctions is ruling. Definatly a call most dealers never seen coming as there was and may still be for awhile a golden opportunity. However if we are talking about it its likely to late unless you have collected china over the years and are sitting on a nice collection.

Fincbob,

CTO means "Canceled To Order". It is a reference to postage stamps that are sold by governments to collectors as "used" but were never actually postally used. It's esp common in the the old Soviet block countries from the 1950s through 1980s. They are usually easy to identify as they have light, circular cancelations (usually off to the corner of the stamp) and almost always have original gum.

Brian

i understand that but my question is why is the CTO having such a high value. whats so special about these CTOs!

Did I not read that for some reason, many collectors in China actually prefer CTO?

As rileysan mentioned countries like Russia and alot of the arab states did massive amounts of CTO's for collecting or tourist purposes. These countries basically flooded the market although they make for good thematic collections. This is just a guess and may be backed up or not but if the China CTO's are doing that well Cancelling to order may have been a less used process and thus making them more rare than the same typically used or even mnh stamps. I'm not sure of quantities for various China stamps but with the high population I would imagine Regular defins and commems were plentiful making the CTO's actually a rarer stamp amongst its postally used or availiable same stamp. More and more the trend is for used to be more valuable since many new releases are done in low numbers and a good portion are being collected MNH . For example the new Canadian $10 blue whale that can still be purchased thru Canada Post has sold used for $20+ . China is a very unique and misunderstood country from alot of aspects but generally they do things for a reason and usually its to make money.