Cancellations

Curious: The five stamps at the top of the page are very carefully cancelled, and they have their original untouched gum. Do dealers get deals an purchases of this type since the stamps will never be used for postage?
Conn

Hi King Conn.....


CTO's.....canceled to order......worth less than used in almost all cases. Basicly sold to dealers at a discount as space fillers of hi-vals or in cases where used are hard to find........you'll find notes about them all through Scott.....some countries actually apply the cancel during the printing process. Many are produced simply as income without any intention of them ever being available as real postage.

Gee nr-notrare I ask you not to tell me that (in hind site). I must have a dozen more of those little suckers. Oh well live and learn, and am I ever learning a lot on this forum.
Seriously thanks for the information.
Conn

Conn....


Sorry to be the bearer of bad news........but some countries started producing CTO's about 1870-1880's.

stamps, even CTO's, do get very interesting when more than 100 years old. they are for me "antiques" nice!

Tom:

If I soak a CTO so it has no gum, would you still be able to recognize it as a CTO or could I fool you into thinking it was postally used?

KirkS

I collect East German stamps, DDR. They frequently made CTO stamps to get hard currency from the West. I treat *any* DDR stamp off cover or off piece as a CTO...
Kirk, soaking it wouldn't make a difference to me!

Dan

Cto's have the same characteristic: a very neat corner cancel usually gummed

The trouble with DDR cto's is they usually sell the sets incomplete...leaving out the hi value of the set !!

Those are called a "Sperrwert." The DDR would intentionally make a limited number of one value of a set to make it difficult and more expensive to collect, thereby generating more hard currency. It required a special subscription to purchase the Sperrwert.

Dan

Are the missing "Sperrwert" stamps sold individually or do you need to buy the entire set to get the missing high value?

Didn't all the Warsaw Pact countries do the same (like Bulgaria whose CTO's are at the top of this thread)? I seem to come across a lot of these 1970's (+/-) sets often missing one or two high value stamps from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, etc.

The "Dunes" (Yemen, UAE: Ajman, etc.) really stretched the term "postage stamp" with their topical releases starting in the 1960's...so much that Scott only lists a few.

In the 1970's the big stamp houses would send glassines of these CTO sets for preview and I remember buying some to stuff in a Harris Standard Album. Within the past 5 years I sold off most these stamps except for DDR. Since DDR is now back in Germany I like having a volume of DDR to go with my Scott Specialty German collection.

I'm finding that when entering a new country collection I don't want to start cheap and just get all the commons because I seem to rebuy them all once I get to the point where I'm striving to fill holes (either buying sets for the missing high values or buying other collections to beef up mine.

I haven't given up on those eastern countries, but I would like to better understand how to identify pre-1940 CTO vs. postally used. Albania, for example is a country of current interest up to 1938.

There is now a demand for many of the Communist Bloc nations CTO'd stamps from the 1950s-1970s... topical collectors are looking for them and driving up the price!

One man's trash is another man's treasure!

David

That's my point guys. If I SOAK the stamp, the gum would be gone.

So does that now mean ANY stamp with a neat corner cancel is CTO?

KirkS

I was referring only to the initial issuance by the DDR. The DDR cranked out tons of stamps and carefully controlled their delivery to Western stamp dealers. If you had zee proper permit (i.e. paid more) you could also get the Sperrwert.

What the dealers did after that was up to them. I personally consider a set without the Sperrwert like any US short-set that is missing a high value.

If you look at the WW Scott catalogue, the price of the Sperrwert is significantly higher than the remaining set. In fact, Scott italicizes the prices.

I don't collect other Eastern Block countries so I'm not sure what their practices were. I'm sure someone will jump in with an answer.

Dan

It may or may not be a CTO. If it is from the DDR it most likely is. Regardless, a CTO is a CTO with or without gum and is generally considered a used stamp.

Dan

Is there a way to know the difference between a neat cancel w/o gum and a soaked CTO?

I have just assumed that if it's a known CTO issue with a neat cancel then it's probably a CTO. That is what lead me to assume the Netherlands stamp below from 1906 is a CTO:




THere are volume producing CTO countries from the 1960's and on that clearly seem to target topical collectors issuing stamps with little relationship to their country but strong fit for topical collectors (Disney characters, Comic book characters, US baseball players, etc.). I have thought about a topical collection (art, ships, etc.) but get turned off thinking about having these CTO's drive the bulk of the content because it just seems too much like a sticker album, however, I do get interested in CTO's of themes that are educational on the country (i.e. Albanian stamps of Albanian mosiacs, ancient art from Yugoslavia, etc.). I became more interested in the CTO's of Albania (for example) when organizing them into a profile of the country and eleminating any topics not related to their country (i.e. animals, ships, space, people, events not providing a strong representation of their country...this got tricky because I don't know if a Cosmonaut or animal is Albanian w/o some investigation.

This (mint--not CTO) stamp of Quanah Parker, for example, would be of interest if produced in North America but coming from a CTO happy African country doesn't really seem to fit.