Please Explain CTO Solved Thanks!

Hello everybody, I saw an older post today on CTOs.From that post I gather that a CTO is a stamp that has been cancelled, generally in the cprner, and is unused with original gum.The pricing is what I am not sure of. From the way I understand ita CTO is priced lower than a mint sram and a little bit higher than a used stamp.Is this correct. Using Russia SC# 3256--50K Blue Violet as an exampl, that is the one I have, how would it be priced. It is 3.50 Mont and .35 used. I am just trying to understand how it works.
Thanks
David

There are exceptions, of course (there are always exceptions), but generally CTO sells for quite a bit less than used, when it sells at all. "Used" is usually meant to be genuine postal use. (If a catalogue is valuing a particular item as CTO, it should say so.)

Eastern European CTO stuff is available by the glassine-fulls for almost nothing. There must be pallets loaded with the stuff somewhere.

At least that's my two cents.

Thanks cjd, that clears thigs up. Is a CTO pretty much like a precancel?
Thanks again.
David

CTOs are not valid for postage, so they allow the country to sell the stamps to dealers waaaay below face value, and still preserve the value of their country's true postage. Some of them got to the point where the cancel was just part of the printing process.

Precancels are still intended to see legitimate postal use, so I look at them as being in an entirely different category.