Cto's

Hello everyone,

I recently bought some stamps and in the description of the stamps it said that there were CTO's in it. What are CTO'S and what were they used for.

CTO stands for "canceled-to-order." These stamps are made especially for collectors. The stamps have cancellations automatically applied to them right after printing (sometimes even as part of the printing process) so that they are rendered invalid for postage but never actually used to pay for postage. Many topical collectors really don't mind CTOs, while other collectors don't want to include anything in their albums made especially for them and choose not to collect them.

Here is an article from Linn's that will give you a good oerview of CTOs.

http://www.linns.com/howto/refreshe...ercourse.asp