Scott CTO Pricing

A couple of questions came up.

I know that for some countries with abundant modern CTO stamps, e.g. Russia, Scott has a not that pricing for used examples are for CTOs. However, there are a ton of little countries with abundant CTOs, e.g. Guyana, Guinea, but no information regarding CTOs. My assumption is that used values are postally used examples, and CTOs ain't worth a lick. Is this a correct assumption?

Another question regarding stamps that does not have pricing for used examples in Scott at all, e.g. St. Thomas and Prince. I assume that there were no postally used examples, and again CTOs ain't worth a lick. Is this a correct assumption?

There's this note in Scott, but it doesn't answer my questions.

Some countries also issue stamps canceled-to-order (CTO),
either in sheets with original gum or stuck onto pieces of paper or
envelopes and canceled. Such CTO items generally are worth less
than postally used stamps. In cases where the CTO material is far
more prevalent in the marketplace than postally used examples, the
catalogue value relates to the CTO examples, with postally used
examples noted as premium items. Most CTOs can be detected by
the presence of gum. However, as the CTO practice goes back at
least to 1885, the gum inevitably has been soaked off some stamps
so they could pass as postally used. The normally applied postmarks
usually differ slightly from standard postmarks, and specialists are
able to tell the difference. When applied individually to envelopes
by philatelically minded persons, CTO material is known as favor
canceled and generally sells at large discounts.

That's the problem.

The purpose of the catalog is to provide guidance when buying and selling stamps. As far as I know Scott sucks it that big time. The catalog pricing is oriented at the dealer, but that kind is almost extinct now; 99% of the transactions made online.

For a while now I've been thinking that it is time to ditch those catalogs, and establish an open source, uniform, online database, so everybody can download any file of interest, and submit up-to-date pricing information for different grades of the stamps.

It is so easy to do, so I'm really surprised it's not done yet. I guess current generation of stamp collectors wasn't born with i-phone in their hands

CTO's are generally accepted to worth less then Used examples.

St. Thomas is in the scott catalog... I don't have mine handy at the moment to tell you where. But look in the back of an album where all the countries are listed by name and it will tell you what album and page to go to.

stampvirgin

Thank you for advise, but my problem is that for St. Thomas, and many other countries, Scott often gives prices for unused stamps only when it comes to modern stamps 1980s-90s,at least in my 2008 catalog. One of the seller on ebay said, in his lot of CTOs, that Michele has a note which state that prices are the same for unused and used. But I'm not buying that. To me unused copy worth much more than CTOs.

There aren't many CTOs for sale on ebay and other auction, but their prices are all over the place. So it is a pain in the neck to come up with good estimate for those stamps.

What about countries (ex. the former USSR, Bulgaria, DDR etc ) where the choices are either MNH or CTO... postally used is hard to find (if not nonexistent)?

danko I am with you on cataloges. I have become my own cataloge on Australia stamps over the last 2 years. It is all about what the online buyer will pay. On a whole buyers are very good with their prices that they will pay for their stamps online. Online buyers are the cutting edge of the modern stamp prices. That is where it is all happening.

Quote from danko




Quote from wt1 that I like very much!

I know this is technically cheating, but if you take a bunch of CTO stamps and soak the gum off the back, is there any way to tell the difference between these and actually postally used stamps?

The cancel is the telling feature in how to tell the difference. It is usually placed on a corner so the printing press (or postal clerk in rare instances) can cancel four stamps at once. It is the same cancel on all stamps of that series. This would not happen in real life.

Real cancels are usually more messed up and dated differently and with different place names even. And in different positions.

Yes. I'd say that most "advanced" worldwide collectors have inbuilt "instinct" for detecting CTO's. This is mainly due to handling/seeing thousands and thousands of stamps.

But it's also about knowledge. If you take for example East Germany, even the basic editions of Michel list known CTO-cancellations (location + dates used/printed). And when you dig in deep enough and read specialized literature, similar listings appear for a lot of countries where CTOs have been used.