Soaking Gum Off A Cto?

I'm just curious say I was to soak the gum off of a CTO,then how would you tell it was a CTO?

*** Edited by Staff to clarify topic title. Titles are important! ***

whats a CTO? chief technology officer?

cancel to order and someone with a good explanation will guide you from here i'm still learning myself

i know what a cancel to order is just not familiar with abbs been collecting for over 20 years. usually the CTO have a perfect cancellation one good look and you know its not your regular cancellation. hope this helps

Here is an article in Linn's about this very topic.

http://www.linns.com/howto/refreshe...rcourse.aspx

nice read shark.

i remember the older mongolian issues were like that also

Tina:

You may soak off the gum on a CTO'd stamp, but usually you can tell that it was CTO's. Generally speaking, the CTO'd stamps from the 1950s to 1970s were either cancelled as part of the printing process, or they were VERY neatly cancelled by hand.

The only exception that I know is the few stamps from some African countries, in the 1960s, were CTO'd by hand with regular cancellers. Those stamps would not be identified as being CTO'd, with out their gum... in my opinion.

David

Tina, Why would you need to soak a CTO?
They should not be adhering to anything.
Unless a spill or humidity got them and they are stuck together.
If that's true you have to soak them carefully.

Mike

CTOs often become adhered to album pages when one is too aggressive with hinge moistening and there really is no sin to soaking CTO's because they are generally easily recognized as such. I have no problem with the practice as long as someone is not trying to pass them off as genuinely used.

oh no no no i'm not soaking mine,I was just curious as to how you would tell.Gee mike don't you know me by now? If something that gets my curiousity jumps into my head then I have to try and get an answer and that POPPED into my head.I did have a large glass of icewater on my night stand and it sweated onto a small stack of stamps and I had to soak them to get them apart but other than that i'm not into soaking just yet.I'm trying to get basics down here first,questions,questions,questions is what im doing,looking for answers is allcause thats me scratching my head lol

Tina, Keep asking, answers, answers, answers!
By the way only 11 to go before 500!

Mike

No kidding looky there i'm almost a pillar maybe by tomorrow I will be

The topic of CTOs came up somewhere else in this forum and I responded something similar like this:

Usually, a CTO cancellation will be that from a cpaital city of any given country using the CTO method of cancelling.

There were literally 1000s of sheets that were neatly cancelled right in the middle of every 4 stamps to make any single stamp to have a cancellation just on the corner. So, it does not matter if you soak the gum off or not, it is still a CTO. This was the old way for getting CTOs on stamps.

Now some countries literally incorporate the "CTO" right into the stamp design.

Note as well, that in 'most' cases, stamps that have these CTO cancellations probably did not even see the country for which they were intended as mass quantities of these were sold through agents outside the countries they were supposed to represent.

Chimo

Bujutsu