Fake blanking

As a rule, collecting pure (unworn) postage stamps now involves quite tangible financial and time costs for the philatelist, even when choosing a narrow topic for his collection , especially if the topic involves a large number of old stamps: it is increasingly difficult to get them in their pure form and, especially, complete series . Many philatelists prefer to collect past postage stamps.

However, the collection of used stamps by separation from the surface of mail ( envelopes , postcards , parcels , clippings , etc.) can stretch for many decades. Therefore, among ordinary philatelists, the practice of acquiring “place fillers” ( space fillers ) - brands in poor condition, but much more affordable and cheaper. The latter are acquired as a temporary alternative to full copies.

Demand for such brands is also forming. And not only philatelic dealers , but also postal administrations interested in the highest possible sales, cannot but feel this demand. In addition, the postal administration can and usually makes the cancellation easy and does not spoil the mark of the stamp - which is an additional advantage for many philatelists (except stamp collectors). Also, with “cancellation by order” there is no risk of physical damage to the philatelic material during the actual passage of mail.

Thus, the mail satisfies the requests of collectors , offering them both new and retired stamps already in the used form. The tangible interest of the mail lies in the fact that the canceled postal stamp, in any way, does not imply the provision of postal services, which means that even if the mailbox is sold at a significant discount ( discount ), it does not incur corresponding obligations.

Philatelist Attitude

It is very difficult to determine the border separating the unconditionally legal mutual interest of the parties from speculation on this interest and direct fraud and deception by the uncontrolled philatelic public mail. Some collectors do not consider stamps with fake cancellation to be real postage stamps in general, reasonably believing that they were originally made "sterile", that is, essentially non- mail labels, vignettes , and therefore they have no place in the philatelic collection.

However, their colleagues no less reasonably object: CTO brands are identical to normal ^[2] , and therefore it is unreasonable to neglect them in cases where the acquisition of full-fledged copies is difficult. The process of gradual replacement by the philatelist of the elements of his collection with more complete, high-quality, interesting specimens is constant and does not differ from the similar process with CTO brands - this is one and the same process, so the debate about the degree of (un) full value of fictitious cancellations is essentially scholastic .

Both those and others do not consider STO-stamps as full-fledged postage stamps. Some philatelists do not acquire fictitiously canceled stamps for their own collection. The rest regard STO as a convenient way to fill in the space until a full-fledged postage stamp is found.

Cancellations on request were and remain the most affordable for beginning philatelists. And it often happens that one and the same philatelist, as he gains experience, connections in the philatelic world, expands his material capabilities, changes his attitude to stamps with such cancellations to more and more negative.

International Status

One way or another, the exhibition regulations of the International Federation of Philately (FIP) do not contain ^[3] formal restrictions on exhibiting CTOs at international philatelic exhibitions . And most catalogs of postage stamps adhere to reasonable neutrality in this matter: they indicate the presence of such stamps, classifying them as a separate, lower category, and in cases where circulations are fictitiously blanked out almost entirely, the catalogs give their descriptions in abbreviated form without illustrations or exclude them from their listings at all.

This is exactly what happened with the “ sand dunes ” (the principalities of Arabia , later united in the UAE and Yemen ), some brands of Paraguay , Equatorial Guinea and so on. In general, the active practice of mass production of postage stamps with fictitious cancellation, as a rule, sharply reduces the philatelic attractiveness and reputation of the issuing country. A large number of countries that previously allowed cancellation by order, now abandoned this ( France , Luxembourg , etc.). At the same time, a number of developing countries still consider such emissions to be a serious help for their budgets, and they care about their reputation much less.

However, there are cases that violate the general rule. This applies, in particular, to Finland , Portugal , South Africa , Sweden , Singapore , Switzerland , Australia, and others - developed countries that practice active and massive trade in their own slaked stamps, which does not affect the philatelic prestige of these states. For example, an annual set of fictitiously canceled postage stamps of Australia for any year from the last costs philatelists in the amount of about AU $ 80 ^[4] .

Courtesy Cancellation

In the narrow sense, “cancellation by order” (also called “ stamping out of courtesy ” or “ cancellation of favor ”, English favor cancel ) implies an unofficial appeal of a philatelist to postal employees with a request to redeem a postmark with a postal stamp acquired in advance (sometimes, in the same department) ) stamps. The latter can be pasted on an envelope, postcard , a private photo card , in a notebook , simply on a blank sheet of paper. A postal worker extinguishes and returns the philatelic material back to the collector. Alexander Schyolokov in his book “Fascinating Philately” recalls how similar happened with his participation in the 1970s in the USSR , Hungary and Romania ^[5] :

Once, when I was going on a trip along the Volga, I bought a small square book for notes, pasted a postage stamp on it with the image of the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin and, going to the post office on the day of departure, asked to redeem it with a stamp. The meeting with the postal worker at the Moscow post office was held without difficulty. I was paid off the mark. [...] And so it went. In each new city, I was extinguished by a tourist water route stamps that were to some extent connected with the history of the places I visited.

[...] True, in some cities it was more difficult to repay the brand. In any postal window, the brand was sold to me. They saw how I immediately pasted it into my notebook, but barely uttered a request to stamp the stamp with a postmark, the smiling faces of postal girls and ladies became severe and their attitude towards me changed immediately. ... It would seem that the more stamp collectors pay the stamps, the more profitable it is for the post office, but it turns out that the operation does not provide for instructions.

[...] The accidentally invented lesson was fraught with a lot of interesting things ... the appearance in the mail of a person, especially a foreigner, who asked to redeem his stamp, and not in a letter, but in a notebook, often became an adventure. In Hungary, in the city of Mohacs , not knowing whether it is possible to stamp the stamp for an eccentric Russian, a female cameraman called a postmaster. [...] Hungary is a philatelic country. There, both in cities and in villages that had mail, no one ever looked at me with suspicion or surprise ... Quite a different thing turned out in Bucharest . ... The female operator flatly refused to redeem the Romanian stamp pasted on my notebook with the image of the Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu . She showed high revolutionary vigilance and called the policeman .

... At this time, a man in civilian clothes and in good Russian came up behind me, without raising his voice, said:

- Do not hold back. Go away.

Having not yet fully felt the danger of the situation, I thought that a person who knows the Russian language will understand me and help. However, the well-wisher did not even listen. He said something to the policeman, who immediately calmed down, and pushed me to the exit:

- Go away. Quickly! It is in your best interest.

... So Bucharest remained a white spot in my philatelic diary.

Indeed, cooperation between the philatelist and the postal workers takes place only on the goodwill of both parties. It is allowed by the postal rules of some countries, but in others it is either not regulated or is explicitly prohibited, as it is misleading, since the extinguished philatelic material looks like it went through the mail, although in fact it was not.

Signs of similar cancellation:

• Imprint of a regular postmark, usually a calendar stamp, containing all the regular elements, including the name of the city, branch number, etc .;
• Finding a canceled postage stamp and stamp of a stamp on material not intended for the passage of mail;
• Finding a canceled postage stamp and a stamp on whole things that do not contain office notes and labels that are usual for a given country and period;
• Finding a canceled postage stamp and a stamp on whole things that do not contain an address , or with an incorrectly written address that excludes the normal passage of mail.

Balance Extraction

Another type of “cancellation by order” (also called “ stamping balances ”), which is especially characteristic of the early stage of the development of world philately, is the repayment of unsold balances of the circulation of postage stamps of previous issues, thus withdrawn from circulation. The purpose of such an operation is to generate income for the mail by subsequently selling redeemed stamps to collectors, usually at markedly lower prices than those that these stamps previously had.

Often such cancellation by order is made by specially made stamps or according to specially designated rules, which make it possible to distinguish by eye the stamp that has passed such cancellation from the canceled one during the usual passage of mail. That is how in 1887, for example, the Swiss stamps issued in 1862-1881 were canceled (the print contained the additional text “Out of circulation”) or the early stamps of Spain (three horizontal lines crossing the mark).

Signs of similar cancellation:

• As a rule, stamps are canceled in a special way, easily distinguishable from cancellations usual for a given country and period;
• Often the cancellation is carried out already in the vintage sheets , which means that such brands keep their adhesive layer intact (if the latter was originally present);
• Since stamps are blanked out in sheets, it is easy to find not only pairs and quarter blocks at low prices, but also rather large parts of these sheets containing five to six or more copies, linked in random order.

Fictitious Cancellation Actually

As a rule, after overcoming certain reasonable limits, the postal administration encounters a problem: to increase sales, stamps should be inexpensive, but if they are sold below par , commercial organizations sending mail will receive significant savings by sending their mail through such a stamp issuing country, - as a result, an exorbitant load can be placed on the postal system of this country, which can lead to disorganization of the mail message and even bankruptcy of the mail.

To prevent such consequences, postal administrations are inclined to resort to various methods of canceling the circulated circulation of their stamps - that is, to withdrawing from themselves the corresponding postal obligations. Sometimes this is done by launching for sale part of the stamps in an “unfinished” form (see the black print ), in changed colors or with design differences (say, with an unprinted or crossed out denomination), printing a significant part of the print run with the words “ Sample ”, “Reprint”, “Facsimile”, other similar overprints, additions of one or another word to the regular drawing of the brand, perfumes or even breakdown . The most common, however, way to completely preserve the appearance and physical surface of the postage stamp and, at the same time, remove it from the postage, is fictitious cancellation.

In a narrow sense, fictitious cancellation refers to cases when a state, for reasons of maximizing the benefits for its treasury or for ideological , propaganda or popularizing reasons, puts stamping in sheets ^[6] on the stream. Post emissions in such a state sometimes take on the character of speculative issues , and circulations become gigantic, knowingly and many times exceeding utilitarian postal needs, since it is envisaged that most of them will be distributed redeemed by order (in this case, the “order” comes from the mail itself and / or government authorities).

Signs of similar cancellation:

• The blanking looks incredibly crisp and neat, usually in one corner of the mark;
• The adhesive layer of the brand is completely preserved in an unaffected form, which is impossible with the actual passage of mail to it;
• Sometimes the name of the city, date or other signs common to the country and time are not indicated on the stamp;

• Many countries that have been practicing fictitious blanking for many years mechanize the process and perform blanking in a printing way - which can be determined by unnatural alignment, when exactly ¼ of the print remains on each stamp, as well as by the absence of traces of stamp pressure on the stamp’s back, which happens when “Cancellation” is printed on an equal footing with the brand image itself in an offset way;
• In a number of cases (though rarely), when canceled by the typographic method, the stamp of the stamp is “under” the paint. This is especially often the case with multi-color printing and the gilded or silver-plated part of the drawing being applied to a brand: it is technologically more profitable to print all the other inks first, including “blanking”. Similar cases are characteristic of the stamps of the socialist countries of the 1960s - 1980s and for some post- colonial issuers, in particular, “sand dunes”.

For individual stamps, it is difficult to determine with certainty whether they were canceled fictitiously. It should be borne in mind that in some countries (for example, Iceland , Luxembourg , Montenegro ) in the past, unsold remnants of postage stamps were officially extinguished by post stamp after they were withdrawn from postal circulation. And in many countries, it is customary to extinguish stamps with a special stamp even after its expiration. For example, in the German Democratic Republic such a procedure was applied to service marks and advertising postal stamps that were applied for less than two months. ^[6]

Efficiency and Maximum Cards

Special types of fictitious cancellation (more precisely, cancellation out of courtesy), as a rule, are first-day envelopes (FDCs) and maximum cards - in case they did not go through real mail, but are officially canceled by a postmark, ordinary or specially made by the date of publication . Often, efficiency and card maxima do not even contain an address.

Their collecting is an independent and very popular branch of philately, which is devoted to individual catalogs and studies. At times, efficiency and card maximums for collection purposes are extinguished within a certain period (a week or more) after the actual first day of issue. In this case, they speak of postmarking .

Training Marks

A special case of fictitious blanking, as a rule, is also considered annulment overprints, turning the brand into a training and / or training manual for training postal personnel. In 1930, such cancellations, for example, were introduced by the UK Post Office for a network of Post Office Training Schools . Various stamps were made on stamps, as well as on other items widely used by the postal department at that time, turning them into so-called pseudo-stamps ^[7] or educational stamps.

The most common option is blanking with two vertical black stripes. The cancellations were designed to prevent theft, since in this form the stamps could not be used, as well as to solve the problem of the need to report for them in the usual manner. Later, similar brands began to be imprinted “ SCHOOL SPECIMEN ” (“School sample”) or “ FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY ” (“For test purposes only”). Brands similar in function are made in France and some other countries.

Pre-extinguish

With the literal understanding of the term “cancellation by order”, preliminary cancellation (prepayment) formally also falls under certain of its conditions. The latter is also produced by order (of any large wholesaler having large volumes of mail ^[8] ), in large quantities, in stamp sheets before their sale. However, it has a fundamental difference from fictitious cancellation, since stamps canceled in this way are actually put into mail circulation and go through all the stages of a normal postal message (except, in fact, cancellation by postmark) - that is, it is fictitious. Therefore, a prepayment is not considered a “cancellation by order”.

Non-Cancellation

In any case, fake cancellation is legitimate by mail or with the knowledge and permission / as directed by mail. In this, it differs from non-postal cancellations - stamps of various state , public and private organizations that are not related to postal activities. By non-mail include telegraph , telephone , fiscal , club , commercial advertising and so on. cancellation. The latter are generally not of philatelic interest, but sometimes they can be part of highly specialized collections.

Fake Cancellation

The presence on the surface of a postage stamp of a fake or real, but illegitimate (that is, outside the scope of the corresponding mail and time) applied postmark allows us to talk about its fake cancellation . Usually, the latter can be done to the detriment of philatelists from hooligan motives or from self-interest, that is, to give the brand a look of slaked for the purpose of collectible sale at a higher price.

This can happen in those relatively infrequent cases when a used brand is valued more than a quick brand. This applies to the early stamps of distant colonies , stamps that were in circulation for a very short time, associated with an unexpected change of power in one country or another, when the new government threw out on the market stocks of stamps of the previous regime that were in short circulation of the occupation issues , which were no longer necessary, rare stamps, prints with certain dates, etc.

In a number of such cases, the market value of the redeemed marks may exceed the redeemed ones at times, by an order of magnitude, or even more. Stamps spoiled by false cancellations cease to be objects of philatelic interest. Fake cancellation should not be confused with fake.

The Regulation on State Signs of Postal Payment and Special Postal Stamps of the Russian Federation dated May 26, 1994 prescribes:

I. Signs of the postage of the Russian Federation

3.3. [...] The Publishing Center “Marka” is allowed to produce at the enterprises of Goznak or on its own a part of the circulations of postage signs in canceled form.

II. Special postmarks of the Russian Federation

3.3. [...] Addressless blanking and blanking on blank sheets of paper is allowed.

• Large philatelic dictionary / Under the general. ed. N.I. Vladinets and V.A. Jacobs. - M .: Radio and communications, 1988 .-- 320 p. - ISBN 5-256-00175-2 . (See Club, mass, machine, mechanical, non-postal, typographic , stamping sheets, retroactively, balances, on request (courtesy), typographic . ) (Retrieved February 10, 2009)
• Stamping by order, out of courtesy // Philatelic Dictionary / V. Gralert, V. Grushke; Abbr. per. with him. Yu. M. Sokolova and E.P. Sashenkova. - M .: Communication, 1977 .-- S. 272. - 271 p. - 63,000 copies.

• “STO (Stamp with cancellation upon request)” - a chapter from the e-book “The World of Philately” V. A. Novosyolova (Smolensk) on the site of the Union of Philatelists of Russia “World m @ rock” (Retrieved February 9, 2009)
• "Philately. Part 1. The philatelic prestige of the country ” - article by E. V. Kirillova on the site “ Lib.Ru: Server “Abroad” " (Retrieved February 9, 2009)
• Linn's Stamp News (United States) Website (Retrieved February 10, 2009) :
  • "Postage stamps that are canceled-to-order" - an article by Michael Baadke of May 11, 1998
  • “CTOs offer a viable collecting alternative” - article by Kathleen Wunderly of January 28, 2002
  • “Stamp mixtures, packets add to collections” - article by Michael Baadke on October 12, 1998
  • "Collectors find approvals offers convenient" - article by Michael Baadke of June 28, 1999
  • “Collectors use abbreviations to communicate” - article by Michael Baadke of August 30, 1999
  • "'Collectible' is in the eyes of the beholder" - article of November 25, 2002 (author - Rachel Supinger )
  • “Let's spell out some stamp collecting acronyms” - article by Rick Miller of July 12, 2004
  • “Collecting used postage stamps isn't quite as simple as it might seem” - article by Rick Miller, September 4, 2006
  • “Basic collecting terms: what you don’t know can hurt you” - Rick Miller article December 31, 2007