The truth is within and only you can reveal it 16 May 2018 03:27:26am
re: British Antarctic CTO's
CTO's are just regular stamps. People collect them because they are stamps. The only difference is they are cancelled which negates their postal use. They are either extras from the normal print runs or sunsequent runs cancelled to sell to the stamp market at reduced prices. They are normally cancelled in the corners so 4 stamps can be cancelled at the same time and do not have gum. Since the 1950s the majority of used stamps through out the world are probably CTO's.
As much as CTO's detract from used values, SON CDS's add to the value and the most popular way of collecting used stamps. SON CDS stand for socked on the nose circular date stamps.
That being a near perfectly centered cancel in the middle of the stamp.
to add to Mitch's comment, some countries printed stamps specifically to be used as CTOs and often ran them through the printer for the cancels, meaning it wasn't a cancelling deviced, per se, but the printer that applied the CDS.
Czech, Romanian, Russian, and Hungarian stamps were printed in the bucketloads, often with one stamp of the series in much smaller print runs, for use in the CTO trade. Finding these mint is more difficult, and finding them postally used often extremely difficult.
David
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
CTOs are generally sold by the postal authorities to the stamp trade. It is a means for the respective governments to obtain needed cash, especially the East European countries following World War II.
Some CTOs issued recently, like in Australia command premiums and are sought after.
Countries like Belize, printed the cancellation on the stamp on their earlier issues from the 1970s. That, too, was designed to raise needed capital.
Why sell CTO and not just sell unused stamps? When the stamps are canceled, they cannot be used for postal purposes. Pure profit for the postal authority/government.
But leaving them uncanceled and, therefor, an open liability (to someday actually deliver a piece of mail) would violate the robust, vigorous, and strictly enforced accounting standards routinely found in governments of countries that issue CTOs.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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