Tagging

do you check your stamps for tagging?

Yes, but most collectors don't, as most collectors do not have the lamp/interest.

I'm not sure if you intentionally wanted to put this in the precancel subforum. In general, bureau precanceled and special (bulk, pre-sort...) rate stamps are NOT tagged. There are exceptions/errors, such as the 10¢ bulk rate eagle/shield printed in error on tagged paper (Scott US #2603a).

i posted this in precancel as I am doing an inventory of stamps picked up and when using the scott catalog I see that the value on some used stamps with tagging omitted have a higher value and sometimes the note that the value would be even higher with a precancel. The pcan collectors I have talked to don't seem to check for tagging. so is tagging not an issue to pcan collectors?

On precanceled stamps, in general the tagging is deliberately not done. If the precanceled value is higher, it is generally NOT because it is untagged, but because the precanceled version of the stamp is more valuable.

Could you give a specific example of "some used stamps with tagging omitted have a higher value and sometimes the note that the value would be even higher with a precancel"? Thank you.

I suspect we may not be talking about the same thing, especially with the term "tagging omitted". Usually, tagging omitted refers to a stamp that SHOULD be tagged, but the tagging was left out in error. "Untagged" refers to a stamp that was not tagged on purpose.

first example I can think of, scott 1278

In general, Scott does not provide a price for used tagging omitted stamps because in some cases the taggant can wash off.




OK, this is a terminology issue. In #1278, the stamp should be tagged, EXCEPT if it is Bureau pre-canceled INSTEAD (#1278c). Tagging omitted refers to an error in which the stamp is supposed to be tagged but didn't get tagged (#1278d) -- hence Scott specifically states the requirement that the stamp NOT be pre-canceled.

#1278c (pre-canceled) has a higher catalog value than #1278d (tagging omitted error) because of the pre-cancel and not because of a tagging omitted error.

A pre-canceled tagging omitted error doesn't exist because the pre-canceled stamps weren't tagged to begin with.

This is why, in general, tagging is NOT an issue with Bureau pre-cancel collectors -- they aren't supposed to be tagged.

In this discussion, I'm limiting myself to lined Bureau pre-cancels.