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I noticed that a lot of WW stamps have gum on them even though they have cancels, are they precanceled like some U.S. stamps? Most U.S. stamps seem to have gum only if they have never been attached to a cover.

Thanks in advance.

They are collectively termed CTO stamps.
However some are common as mud while others are valuable depending on country and year of issue.

Try 'CTO' in the search button as there are entire threads devoted to the discussion already.

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

Thanks, I'll research that!

This explanation from wiki seems to clear that up..

"While some collectors value mint postage stamps, others prefer to collect stamps that have been used. In practice, it is slow and difficult to build a comprehensive collection by removing stamps from mailed envelopes, so modern postal administrations accommodate collectors by offering new stamps already cancelled. The advantage for collectors is that the stamps count as officially used without being subjected to the stress of actually going through the mail. Also, the postal service can arrange a relatively light and unobtrusive cancellation mark."

Yes and no. Billions of packet material stamps were printed in the 60's to 80's that had the 'cancel' as part of the printing plate. They could never have been used for postage and in many cases, weren't even valid to try. Many were from countries that have never existed.

Others came in special presentation folders (early Australian ones) and can be worth more than the mint stamp.

Today? It's a way of using up surplus stock that has been returned, adding another layer to the collecting mix.

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

That's interesting.. so the CTO (cancelled to order) stamps could mean..
1) intentionally cancelled stamps with the collector/dealer in mind
2) "from new sheets for sale at reduced rates to the stamp trade"
3) "philatelic forgery involving use of rare types of canceling devices"
4) "Some countries, such as the emirates that later joined the United Arab Emirates, went further and printed the cancellation directly onto the stamp with the rest of the design. Many collectors do not consider these authentic stamps, and some catalogs categorize them separately."

Yes, some stamps were purely made and CTO'd for collectors - not intended for REAL use.

D.

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Visit my Website - http://WWW.DJMSTAMPS.COM for Australia & World Stamps, Collections and Accessories

Hi guys,

I'm a newbie to the site and am going through different threads and trying to extend my knowledge. I have found this thread very clear and concise without too much dribble as some threads seem to go on. Maybe we need a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section where the answers to questions like this are as clear and concise as this question and answer.

Maybe I should start a new thread and see if this could be another way to go??

Cheers
Helen

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My husband call's me Hobbit. He say's my collecting is a cross between a Hobby and a Habit.

Hi Helen... Glad you liked my thread! Yeah, I pretty much like to get right to the matter at hand. I have plenty of room for humor and antics where stamp collecting is concerned and you'll probably see some crazy posts as I get more comfortable with this site.

Cheers,

Don

Hi Don,

I also enjoy the chit chat that goes on but sometimes when you are wanting to know something in particular you need to wade through a lot of replies before you get to an answer. This thread answered a number of questions that I had eg What CTO stood for and why there was gum on some cancelled stamps .
As a newbie to collecting (haven't touched my stamps in over 30 years since being a kid) I never worried about different terms and the like, I just collected the stamps and put them in their countries and that was it. Now I am trying to put them in year order and working out whether they have watermarks and what type and if they are phosphor and the list goes on. So a quick answer is always good, especially when it is getting late. But here I am going on with chit chat .

Anyhow thanks and cheers
Helen

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My husband call's me Hobbit. He say's my collecting is a cross between a Hobby and a Habit.

The presence, or absence, of gum isn't always a guide to whether a stamp is CTO. You may need to approach your stamps with an open mind.

For example, these 5 Rupee stamps of Charkhari State in India



are unquestionably CTO. They don't have gum - and never could have, because they were issued without it.

So why must they be CTO? These stamps were valid only within the borders of Charkhari State, a small area with a population of less than 200,000. No possibility of airmail. 5 Rupees represented about 25 to 30 times the basic registered letter rate, so these could only have been used on huge, possibly registered, parcels. What's the likelihood of a single stamp on a huge registered parcel receiving such a nice, neat corner cancellation? What's the likelihood of two? What's the likelihood of all 49 used examples in my collection having come from such parcels?

Sometimes, as a collector, you need to be nasty and cynical. If it looks too good to be true, well ...

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Well that throws another spanner in the works . There is nothing simple about collecting stamps. I will look more closely at them. In general terms are CTO's of more value than ordinary cancelled/used stamps?

Cheers
Helen

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My husband call's me Hobbit. He say's my collecting is a cross between a Hobby and a Habit.

Hence my number four above..

4) "Some countries, went further and printed the cancellation directly onto the stamp with the rest of the design. Many collectors do not consider these authentic stamps, and some catalogs categorize them separately."

Helen, once again, it all depends

Some Australian CTOs are more valuable. There is a thread for them. In the madly unlikely event you could find a genuinely commercially used copy of that Charkhari 5 Rupee stamp, I'd cheerfully offer you a four-figure sum for it. But generally speaking, CTO stamps will be worth less than properly used stamps. (Do you have any of those quite attractive 'used' stamps from Outer Mongolia, issued in the the 1950s to 1980s? And how many letters have you received from Outer Mongolia with those stamps on them?)

And to pile confusion on confusion, there's a sort of subdivision of CTO: favour cancellations. These are not outright CTOs, churned out by greedy postal administrations, but stamps cancelled by an obliging post office employee, specifically to provide used examples. These ¼ Anna stamps from Barwani State in India



were certainly available for use: two of them would have paid the rate for a local postcard. However, genuinely used examples were very hard to find, and Barwani didn't produce CTOs. So some enterprising collector went to the Rajpur post office, and persuaded someone there to cancel this sheet, as a 'favour'.

Valuing 'favour' cancellations is even more tricky than valuing CTOs. Once again, it really all depends on what and where

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Don, these Charkhari stamps were all cancelled by hand at Charkhari. The cancellations weren't printed.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

There is no short answer to cover the gamit of the meaning of CTO. But this might help.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=11242&p=454307&hilit=cancelled+to+order#p454307

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

Interesting infos! Thanks. Here's an interesting Charkhari State Indian stamp that I recently found in my collection. No gum, but appears to have been printed on the reverse. Must have been placed on the sheet underneath while the sheet was still wet?

Cheers.

Yes, I think you're right, Don. This sort of thing occurred regularly with that set from Charkhari. For example, getting back to those 5 Rupee stamps



To avoid further derailing this thread, I discussed the Charkhari set here: http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5149

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Wow! That's a spectacular example. Yes, I think Charkhari deserves its own thread! Cheers.

We've just been having a bit to say about other Charkhari stamps at the end of this thread http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8480, too (You'll need to scroll down to page 130 and 131.)

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

And that's why wiki should be taken with a grain of salt, and considered only a starting point in research at best.

Its rather hilarious that they claim postal administrations were helping collectors obtain used stamps by CTO-ing them. Many countries did it simply as a way to earn hard currency. The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, tin-pot African dictatorships...it wasn't enough for them to issue masses of stamps with pretty pictures of animals and cars and space to attract thematic collectors, they then "postmarked" the stamps and sold them at a small fraction of face value to dealers to go into kiddy packets.

Of course, wiki's point is fair enough--in the Cold War years, how much genuine postally-used Eastern Bloc was floating around in the West? You couldn't pop into your local dealer and buy a bag of Romania kiloware.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

If you lived in East Germany or Czechoslovakia for instance, it would probably be quite easy to clip Mongolia stamps off mail. Just as in the Western world, "study abroad" means going to the USA, UK, Australia et al, for Communist countries, it was an achievement if the government gave you a scholarship to study in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary. Usually something "practical" like engineering. The crown prince of Cambodia in the 1970s was a student in Prague.

When you become a more advanced collector and start perusing auction catalogues for higher-valued items, the term per favour might come up. As you can guess, that means favour cancel--asking the clerk at the PO to cancel a mint stamp for you without actually mailing anything with it. Also known as "hand-back service".

I remember an auction here a year or two ago, that had a collection of early-ish (Geo V) HK stamps with rare cancels. A number of them were described as having been backdated, but for some of the small branch POs these were the only existing strikes of those hammers known. Someone with an inside connection in the PO had, in the 1940s, got hold of the old hammers and had some 'reference strikes' made on mint stamps so their collection would be a step closer to completion.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

Good thing Wiki is in flux and you can change and add info to your liking. I go there for basic info and I've learned a lot about various things on WIKI, I have no problem with the site for the most part. Except when they omitted a chess problem I submitted once!

Cheers.