I Inherited Thousands Of Stamps

i inherited thousands of stamps and I am having a hard time with some things.

I have this bunch of Austrian stamps from the 70's and they all have the glue on them but they are all cancelled with a round cancellation with the city and the date. I looked up the date of first issue and it is never a match. why would anyone cancel an apparently perfectly good stamp?

Second question is I have a bunch of stamps that are not cancelled at all but have no glue. Are these considered unused?

I get the impression that your glue is gum. The adhesive on the back of a stamp that is used to stick the stamp to an item of mail by wetting it is called gum.

Without pictures, I cannot be sure. What you describe as stamps with glue and a stamp sounds like cancelled-to-order (cto) stamps. Some countries fund themselves by selling stamps to collectors but want to be sure they will never be used. They cancel the unused stamps. Some philatelic bureaus offer this as a service to collectors who want cancelled stamps. Is the city name in the cancels 'Wien?'

Stamps can be issued without gum, but it is not something done much in Europe. So the gum must either have been removed or the stamp was soaked of an item of mail and was used. An uncancelled stamp from the late twentieth century issued by Austria, probably, was used at one time. However, if these are stamps from the 1970s it is questionable there are large quantities around that escaped cancelling. If they are recent issues, it is quite common they escape cancelling. So, what stamps are they? What is a bunch?

Welcome!

Dale

Welcome,


Peter

gexadrummer,

Collecting for the enjoyment of collecting, whatever that might be, is the name of the game. Don't hesitate to ask questions especially if you need basic information and especially more advanced sources of information for any possible topic. You should be able to find folks on this board a little further along on their collecting journey glad to share experiences.

My personal bias is a used stamp loses the story of its journey in the postal service when it is removed from the cover it transported to its destination. Collecting postal history adds a whole new aspect to your journey in our hobby.

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ

Welcome! Would love to see some pictures, if you can provide them.

oh yaay, I uploaded a picture LOL

I have this stamp I am looking into (again one of thousands). I thnk it is a SC# 443, SC# 490 or SC# 452 but not sure how to tell the difference. It is a Perf 10 Vertical and coil. However I think the right side perfs were cut off before it went onto the post card I took it off of. It is slightly smaller than any other 1C I have to compare it to even some othe coil ones. No idea why someone would cut it so clean before applying to a postcard back in the early 20th century.

I sure could use tips for using my iPhone to take good pix. I seem to be undereducated

Those Austrian stamps, almost certainly, are cto at a central Vienna post office.

FYI. CTO(cancelled to order) are generally not as desirable as postally used.

It is very likely that the straight edge on your coil was caused by the knife edge on the coil dispensing machine. Whether it is one of the three stamps you mentioned depends on the watermark or lack thereof and the printing method. See stampsmarter.com for more information on how to identify the Washington/Franklins

The illustrations on those Austrian stamps are incredible.

I'm going to walmart to but some Rosignol Lighter fluid to check for watermarks. I came across a Washinbgton 2c Perf 10 I have identified as either a 453, 454, 455, 491 or 492 but he differwnce is T1,2,3 vs type II or III what is difference between T1,2,3 and type II,III. Is the latter not a coil?

 T1 hor. coil   10 vert.
 T2 hor. coil   10 vert.
 T3 hor. coil   10 vert.
 type II 10 vert.
 type III 10 vert.