What Is Tagging

Hello:

I inherited my grandfathers stamp collection, blocks and sheets from the 40's to the 90's. He took great care of this and I am trying to brush up on my education of all the stamp terms.

I see the term tagging quite often, but don't really understand what this means.

What is tagging?

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

Tagging is applying some amount of luminescence on the stamp, postal card, etc. which can be "sensed" by automated cancelling machines which them applies the cancellation (cancellations as of now use the ugly dot cancellations).
The tagging is applied during the stamp creation process.
ebay has a decent write up on tagging
http://www.ebay.com/gds/Guide-to-US...58564/g.html

So I have a SW/LW florescence box. If I put the stamps in there, they will glow if they were tagged?
Just trying to understand.

Yes, they should. One word of caution though. I do not know what your "box" looks like, but be very careful not to look into the light directly!

Peter

Yes - use the short wave.

ok, thank you. I am a gemologist by trade, so my uv box is great for this process.

Why are the stamps that are tagged worth so much?

I assume you are referring to U.S. stamps issued in the early part of the 1960's? In the beginning, experimentation of tagging stamps was limited to a few locations with only a low percentage of the stamps being tagged. Hence, those stamps do have a premium added to their value. Since the mid-1960's, virtually all stamps were tagged, hence the opposite is the rule; if the stamp is untagged, a premium is added to their value.

Hi ilzho,

Stamps are priced on their rarity and condition. In general, tagged stamps are not worth more. But if a certain issue released limited number of an issue with tagging versus no tagging, then the tagged stamps could be worth more than the untagged stamps.

- stamporator -

Tagging is something I never really cared about. I enjoy looking at my stamps, not imagining the hidden invisible tagging I cannot see. But is there any other method to see tagging other than a UV box? (are those expensive?)

ilzho,

Welcome to SCF!

The United States Stamp Society's A Glossary of Terms for the Collector of United States Stamps is a useful resource for getting up to speed on terminology.

http://glossary.usstamps.org/

Welcome to the forum ilzho

Tagging comes in various formats. They were applied to some stamps so that the cancelling devices would automatically be triggered to cancel any given stamp(s) on a cover.

The material used was a phosphorescent type. They are in different strengths too depending on the country of origin. Some of these 'taggants' will migrate to other stamps if they are stored close together, so, be careful to keep them separate.

Some stamps glow right under the ultra-violet light while other 'glow' for a short period of time 'after' the light is taken away from above the stamp.

For Canadian issues, there are Ottawa & Winnipeg tagging. The Winnipeg ones glow after while the Ottawa ones glow during the light's application over the stamp. Ottawa had OP2 and OP4 types.

I am not well versed on the US types but some are similar to Canadian tagging as far as I know?

Hope this helps?

Chimo

Bujutsu

The $50,000 fish in the fishing competition has the tag on it that is worth all the money.

The first time I heard of tagging.