Well, I was browsing through ehate and I was amazed at how many of the new issues are displayed with identical post marks, is there some kind of explanation?
If that's the case my question would be, why would anyone buy mint stamps, have them cancelled and then sell them as used. Almost 60 years of stamp collecting and still an ignorant!
Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy.. 31 Dec 2016 02:05:32am
re: UK CTOs
" why would anyone buy mint stamps,
have them cancelled and then
sell them as used...."
It is a custom that is not limited to the UK,
although that is where I first noticed it.
I had been buying from a dealer in Wolverhampton,
the old fashioned way. Approvals were sent
carefully mounted on pages with a number
and the price just below the stamp.
As I filled in the early UKs
and began to get into the then modern issues,
probably the mid-1970s, I noticed that
many of the recent issues were priced higher than face
and the majority had almost perfect quarter circle
CDS cancels. ( Wolverhampton local post office of course.)
So along with a payment I asked the same question.
The answer.
The dealer had a stable of picky impatient collectors
who wanted a used set as soon as possible.
Getting fine used stamps for inventory
was becoming difficult and processing them
was certainly time consuming.
So he took a mint sheets to the local office
where he had the cancels applied so that
on return he could detach corners,
arrow blocks and singles that could be mailed
promptly to his regular clientele.
He based his selling price on the face value,
plus some factor to cover his time and effort,
thus used were priced higher than face.
I still have quite a few of those issues,
but the dealer's name escapes me right now.
Charlie
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