Deciding Which Copy To Keep When Neither Is Perfect ...

Having some difficulty working out which stamp to keep when both have flaws, but one is more related to the precanceling itself and one to the stamp itself.

Would it be better to keep a) the stamp with the more perfect (bold, centered) precancel, but with faults? Is it better to have b) the stamp with better perfs, design centering and no thins/tears, even if the precancel is faint/off-center (but still fully legible)?

And is there a point where the balance tips - for example, is a thin stamp with a bold, centered precancel ok, but a torn one is not?

If I was collecting the stamps for the precancel, I would keep the one with the best precancel. Of course, there is a limit for how tatty stamps can be, and still go in my collection, so it is hard to say for certain which one of your stamps I would keep without scans.

I know this may sound childish Jan but I always keep the one that looks the best on the page

Dianne

Hello JanS,

I collect precancels and run into this situation all the time. Most precancel collectors will tell you it is all about the precancel and not necessarily the condition of the stamp itself. While I tend to agree with this precancel philosophy, I can't help but weigh the condition of the stamp when I select "the one" I am going to mount in my album.

The bottom line I guess is like Dianne Earl I pick the one that looks best on the page. Sometimes I'll go with the precancel that is slightly off centered if the stamp is in a superior condition to my other examples.

I am from the school of when in doubt keep them Both

I would have to go with revstampman on this one and just keep both.

Hmm ... but now I just learned in another thread that blocks / coil pairs can be astronomically more valuable than singles, so my clever plan of "sort through them all and get rid of everything except the one best example of each type" will be rapidly going out the window if I'm not careful.

I begin to see where all those ebay sellers with their rooms full of 50 years of accumulated philatelic detritus to sell got their start.

From a accumulator I am in agreement.