Mysterious Scott #1 And #2 Lookalikes, Sort Of...

So I got this in a lot of kiloware the other day. The postal service apparently considered it legit postage because it's cancelled, but I don't know what they are. They're printed on one sheet of paper, not stuck on. Thoughts?





The album page, by the way, is entirely incidental and has nothing to do with the stamps. It was just the page I happened to be open to. In case anybody was wondering.

PS Sorry about the sideways-ness of the picture.

They are cut from the 1947 CIPEX souvenir sheet, which was valid (and still is) for postage.

Here is what the entire souvenir sheet looks like.

Ah yes. If I had bothered to turn over a whole six pages or so, I would have seen that. I thought it might be some sort of commemorative issue, but the colors were puzzling me.

Now it's making me a little twitchy that somebody cut up a souvenir sheet like that for 15 cents of postage. But I guess if you really have to mail a letter...

Okay, so now I have to ask (because my stamp collecting friend mentioned it)... how common is it to find one of these cancelled? Does this happen often or is it rare? (I don't mean like valuable-rare... I recognize that increasing the value of a stamp sheet by cutting it up is probably not a thing, but I mean like, "Huh, that's interesting," rare.)

Also, I realize that the fact that anybody who has one of these, were they worth money, could just cut up a souvenir sheet, stick them on an envelop, and head to their local post office probably means that it's NOT worth anything. I just was wondering if it's a common thing to find these older souvenir sheets cut up and used as postage.

Used examples are very common.

I still occasionally use them for postage when the envelope has enough space.

As Revcollector stated, used examples are very common. As a rule, US stamps printed in the modern era (post 1940) are very common and have little value - even unused. In fact, mint stamps from this time period are readily available for less than face value. If you start buying kiloware (or whatever your collecting interest might be) online, you will almost certainly encounter sellers who use this type of postage on the mailings they send you simply because it's cheaper (and more colorful) to use older stamps (check out ebay some time for listings of usused postage stamps available for ~50% of face value).

Brian