New User From UK - Olympic Stamps

Hi all,
I have recently combined my interests in countries, art and sport and started an Olympic stamp collection!

To start me off, I recently ordered from ebay a pack of 300 Olympic stickers. They all look great but I am now wondering if they are genuine.

I paid £11 for them and if I look up the individual stickers on Phildom.com, I can see they sell for a couple of Euros each....so not big money, but way in excess of the £11 I paid for the bulk pack.

I've ordered a couple of stamps from Phildom.com and will compare them to the ebay versions.....

Thanks all.

Hello. You'll find that most "values" shown in traditional or online catalogues are far in excess of real world prices. Similarly, sellers who offer individual stamps are likely to price them relatively higher than those in bulk lots.

Thanks Geoff.

So the "real" value of these stamps is probably pennies, hence I get 300 for £10.

The seller on ebay has answered my question and told me that they are CTO stamps - which I've had to Google.

It looks like these sorts of stamps are so widespread that 300 for £11, doesn't sound too outlandish and they could be real.

One more question I had is if CTO stamps from North Korea for the 1976 Olympics, were printed in c1976 and then cancelled or could they still be printed today in the same style as the 1976 stamps and sold en masse?

So my "1976" stamp was actually printed in 2024, for example....

Modern CTOs take two broad forms. The stamps could be printed, then cancelled. Or the stamps could be printed with the cancel, cutting out a stage in the production process. In theory, like any stamps, they could be reprinted at any time. In practice, countries will just move on to the next thematic issue. Some collectors will try to get copies that are genuinely postally used, rather than CTO. In many cases, given the stamps will have had little or no use in the supposed issuing country, this will be very difficult.

The Olympics lots or collections that attract higher prices will tend to be those encompassing earlier material, eg the stamps issued for the Athens Olympics in 1896. But you can spend very little and have an extensive and colourful collection.