Recycling First Day Covers

Hi, I'm a complete newbie, so please forgive me for what may seem a stupid question - I've inherited a pile of GB FDC's, but I collect GB used.
My question is, given that the FDC's concerned are fairly modern (mainly 90's) and worth little more than the equivalent used sets, would it be a mad idea to soak the stamps off the envelopes and consider them as used?
Or is this really sacrilege and should I then try to swap them for used sets?

Grateful for any guidance.

If you like them in your collection of used stamps, that is an option.

If you want to know what happens to their value: the cancellations are recognisable. Since they are philatelic, most collectors of used stamps consider them inferior to postally used stamps. So, they will be worth less than cleanly cancelled, postally used stamps.

It's certainly not sacrilege. In addition, FDCs are a hard sell, so using the stamps to fill gaps in your collection is a good approach.

The FDC has a value more then a new stamp in some cases. Depends on the cachet maker and such and addressed or not and so on.

First day covers, especially addressed first day covers have virtually no value (addressees aside). That said, the cancellations are often distinctive and thus, people will know what you've done and collectors would tend to look down on that. Ultimately, it's your property, you do what you want.

In the same manner the CTO (Cancelled to order) stamps are.

I would do it in a heartbeat. When you are filling spaces in an album, having nice CTO examples is much better than having none at all.

The only time I would not consider it is if it was a particularly nice cachet on the FDC.

John

So I have two modern FDCs, both have the same stamp. One FDC is a commercial cachet, mass produced, and if I cut off the stamp, soak it, put it in my album...folks will call this a CTO. But the other FDC is one I made, no cachet, I went to the first day ceremonies, and put it into the mail stream. I soak this stamp off, with the exact same FDC cancel on it. It is obviously philatelic, but it is not really a CTO since it went through the mail stream just like any other normal first class letter?
Don

Cheers guys, your replies pretty much confirm what I thought.

I'll use them as gap fillers, but only until I can replace them with fine postally used examples.
Plus it will free up a little space!

I generally collect mint stamps, but I've done this when I simply cannot find the stamps any other way. Often the FDC cancel is not so noticeable, but even if it is noticeable, the only other option has often been not to have the stamps at all. For stamps you could easily find, I probably wouldn't do that, but you might. FDC's are not worth much, in most all cases, and are actually kind of a drug on the market since collecting them kind of faded away. I don't consider them valuable objects. The same for plate blocks which a few times I've broken up for the stamps.

Well I attended the Stafford Stamp Show yesterday and one dealer was advertising 150 FDC's for £75, so I'm neither encouraged to try and sell mine, or indeed to worry about keeping the stamps on their envelopes.
I think I'll stick with plan A.

That is a bit steep; did you bother to ask him his buy price?

When was listing 1,500 Aus used sets FDC were a great source of hard to get stamps.

I soaked some stamps off first days the other day. :) I prefer used stamps and the first day cancels don't bother me much. There's some higher values of countries like Falkland Islands that are pretty hard to get decent postally used examples, so I go for the first day soakers. Pre-1940 one should think twice or if the cachet is something special.... Hand painted, etc.

"That is a bit steep; did you bother to ask him his buy price?"

I thought that if the dealer was selling them so cheaply (50p each), he could only conceivably offer absolute peanuts to buy them.

So in this case, what would be a good price for a common FDC?