CTO Stamps Real Or Fake?

Morning all,

Most CTO stamps (labels) were never intended to see service franking mail to be delivered from a sender to an addressee. Why would a "stamp collector" want them?

Because most were intended for such use but only available abroad as CTO. Mint stamps never were used either, yet most command a premium over used. Somehow, 'stamp collectors' want those.

It is a discussion with no end in sight. As has been stated on many ocassions on this forum, everyone must make their own decisions about what to collect.

I WILL say, that earlier in my collecting life, I was heavily influenced by the purist arguments surrounding this issue and got rid of all CTO's in my collection, (actually destroyed them ), deciding in favor of collecting postally used only. In the end, I realized that, for me, this had caused me to lose some of the earliest enjoyment of the hobby. Now that I am trying to rebuild my world collection in retirement, I am including anything I can get my hands on and wish I had those earlier CTO's back, especially the European ones.

If one looks hard enough, you can find postally used examples of many of these on cover (see this thread of DDR covers https://goscf.com/t/81686&whichpage=1). Even if the covers are obviously philatelic creations the fact that they traveled through the mails shows they were not created only for sale to collectors.

edited for clarity in the last sentence

When your talking about C-T-O and postal use stamps , there is a lot of gray areas . I have a advance Turkey collection ,last year to keep it up and fill in the modern issues I could not find a seller who had a good inventory . So I purchased a large lot of FDC covers .Most of the covers had complete sets but never went thru the postal system .

I just soaked off the stamps and mounted them on album pages ,now the question is those stamps are they C-T-O or are they postally used with a first day cancel ? None of the covers had a address on the envelope .

As mentioned above in my SAAR collection there are stamps that sell for hundreds of dollars and they are C-T-O and got into a fight on the chat board a few years ago over me telling someone they are C-T-O's other people sided with him because of the price ,until another collector from Australia came on ,did people understand .

The stamps are legitimate, the cancels are less so. But it really all depends on the country and time period. Australian CTOs of Kangaroo and George V era are not seen as weeds in the garden, and compared to the standard postal cancels of the era are usually much less detractive to the design.

So in the end it really is all about context regarding the stamp issue. One can be a purist and reject all out of hand, or accept that in some cases CTO are preferable to fully postally used in terms of the aesthetics of the stamp.

For me not really an issue since I prefer to collect mint after ~1920 or so.

In the end I decided to just go with whichever stamp looks the best. In the future when I'm gone my family will dispose of my collection and no one is going to change any pricing over whether a 1988 Polish stamp is postally used or CTO. I'd rather have the best view of the design until then. I have found a few in the mixture where a used copy is either not cancelled or barely cancelled and is better then the CTO I already have, plus the Polish stamps soak off pretty well. The Polish stamps post 1960's are just glassine fillers at this time anyway, I haven't yet committed to the amount of pages I'll have to print to get these all mounted or hinged.

I have asked myself at what point in time do I stop collecting Warsaw Pact countries (Romania, Poland, etc.)? My first Steiner page printing project was two binders of pages for Romania which I filled with stamps mostly after 1940 to 1990 or beyond. I then did the same for each warsaw Pact country including Russia. I then found I lost interest in the stamps after 1950 or so. There were too many pages and the topicals that just didn't seem to be post cards from the country. I then thought I might just save a few that I did like. I did that for Communist Cuba. I began to view them as "stickers". I finally decided to sell them and just have one Scott Specialty Binder for Warsaw Pact countries (not Russia) pre 1940 which I enjoy.

I then moved to Africa where the art, animals, etc. seemed more African and interesting. While I stopped my collection at independence I was a bit more attracted to some.

I now have my childhood Harris Citation album (expended to 3 volumes) for doubles and all stamps I come across from bulk buys. That is a home for the 60's & 70's stamps but in a very densely populated set of pages for quicker review. I am enjoying them more.in this smaller setting but reluctant to go out of my way to obtain more. They do bring back memories of buying packets in the 70's and some of the stamps are remembered.

I don't really go out deliberately to get CTOs, but I have quite a few in my collection, mainly thematic stamps (trains and buses).

I have an amusing story about CTOs. A friend of mine as a teenager got several CTO stamps with flowers on, from Poland. Later he received on a letter a genuine used stamp which was a different value from the same set. The stamp had a neat corner postmark and the envelope was made of typical poor quality chalky 1970s Eastern European paper. As my friend opened the encelope, he bent it slightly, and the stamp popped off, revealing that it had almost full gum. When he stuck it in his album this genuine postally used stamp was almost indistinguishable from its CTO neighbors.

Would not FDCs be CTOs? Most are favor cancelled often weeks after cancellation date and never travel through the mail.

FDCs, as a philatelic item, are canceled to order, but not all the individual stamp copies on them.
Here's an exception, in a related thread: some recent Charles III FDCs have special stamps, not to be found in mint status exactly like that, without some security features.
https://goscf.com/t/85553

Depends on the country and the time period. Many did go through the mails. Ironically then, that should mean that addressed FDCs should be more sought after than unaddressed because it implies the stamps actually served their purpose being sent through the postal system.

I agree, ZebraMan!

Interesting topic.

The majority of British North Borneo stamps from 1888 to about 1916 exist in CTO form as a series of black bars.

They are very collectable.

They are valued in Stanley Gibbons using a separate column after the postally used value column.

They are priced at a substantial discount. Sometimes < 1% of the postally used value. E.G. SG 46 catalogues £150 as postally used but only £1 as CTO.

You can build a nice collection of these interesting issues from a long distant era in a remote and fascinating country for a pittance.

The international court of justice has resided in the Netherlands for the better part of a century. Before the war of 1939 - 1945, this was the permanent court of international justice. After the war, its was succeeded by the international court of justice.

The Dutch postal service, PTT, overprinted current Dutch stamps 'COUR PERMANENTE DE JUSTICE INTERNATIONALE' for use by the court. After the war, the overprint read 'COUR INTERNATIONALE DE JUSTICE.' In 1950, PTT issued stamps intended for use by the international court of justice.

These stamps were not intended to be used other than for official business of the court. Collectors, however, could buy stamps that had been cancelled. Although some stamps can be found without a cancellation, these, normally, are collected CTO. Postally used stamps are rare. When a new series was issued in 1989, the philatelic service sold mint examples of the stamps.