"CTO" cancels printed by photogravure!

[Rein]

CTO's that have been printed simultaneously with the rest of the stamp design are - IMHO - a separate field of stamp collecting. You may even question whether they are postage stamps at all. There is only one source - the philatelic office; they have no postal validity whatsoever. They are just rather similar to stamps and might be compared to stamps that have been provided with a 'Specimen' or "Muster" or 'Muestra' text on top of the design. Neither categories are stamps we may argue....

I have been to stamp printing houses where the philatelic bureau incorporated there have a special printing press to provide the CTO's on the sheet of stamps that have to be sold to customers as "cancelled". Those collectors like to be fooled - the CTO's go into their albums and everybody happy.

The Swiss when still having their Post Office Printing House used a Heidelberg typographic press for it. I'll post a picture here soon.

The Dutch printer JESP that occasionally prints Swiss stamps simply prints the "cancel" simultaneously...

to be continued ...

[Rein]

I collect the CTO's that have been printed in photogravure in the first place. Stamps like these have been printed in photogravure both the stamp design as well as the "cancellation"!

The typographed and the offset-litho CTO's are a bit more difficult to recognize and to tell apart from the real cancellation that is too neat..

Photogravure printed CTO's come from several countries. Well known are the Rumanian ones and the USSR/Russian ones.

A few ex-British colonies have them too:
















to be continued ....

[Rein]

One may say "this is the point of CTO... To provide "lightly-cancelled-look-a-likes" for (non-serious) collectors who otherwise could not get used copies of those stamps easily. They are simply a philatelic by-product just like FDC's, official covers etc. collector items.

IMHO they're about as real as any stamp, but the times simply don't favour them. Maybe in 20-30 years from now collectors understand their hidden value and my CTO-cancelled Mongolia collection skyrockets to big bucks... "

I said "we may argue" or I'd rather say "should argue" among philatelists what we consider philately. As usual we are already too late and the "philatelic industry" has already presented us with an accepted fact as can be seen in the so-called Ethical Code of the UPU. They are mainly concerned with "philatelic products", items derived from postage stamps and cancellatiions.

I do agree that all items that come straight from the post office outlets and can't be used for postage in the first place [FDC's, CTO's etc] are not "postage stamps" in senso stricto but "philatelic products" to use a term that is accepted everywhere [including the philatelists who didn' t bother to think about it profoundly].

to be continued ...

[Rein]

The earliest printed in photogravure CTO's I have found originate from the USSR:






After that a coil stamp from Czechoslovakia. Around 1973 Rumania starts.

Strangely enough I haven't seen any USSR photogravure CTO's between 1970 and 1982???? Maybe I haven't searched long enough

to be continued ...