Stamps that are Cancelled by Favour and to Order

Such cancellations deserve to be explained. ‘Cancelled by Favour’ is an expression used for stamps cancelled in a special manner, generally at the request of a philatelist. Such items did not usually go through the post. There were times when a great number of philatelists were convinced that only cancelled stamps were worth collecting and were of value. So they affixed newly issued stamps to postcards or pieces of paper and had them cancelled at a post office. Sometimes all sorts of ‘rarities’ were produced in this way. Until 1914, for instance, foreign post offices operated in Turkey. In Istanbul there were, in addition to the Turkish post offices, also German, Austrian, British, French, Italian, Russian, Rumanian and Egyptian post offices. A visiting ‘philatelist’ would visit these post offices one after the other, buy a stamp, affix it to a postcard and have it cancelled. In the end, he would post this collection from one of the post offices. Such a combined franking was hardly any philatelic value, but nevertheless, after more than half a century, it is a document of historic interest and reflects the situation existing at that time.

Some postal administrations (mostly of Eastern Europe) supply stamp wholesalers with large quantities of complete sheets of gummed stamps already cancelled. These stamps are cancelled to order and frequently sold at a fraction of their face value. The majority of stamps cancelled to order are used for stamp packets. It is obvious that the philatelic value of such stamps, which have never seen a letter or gone through the post, cannot be compared with the value of stamps normally used on mail. Stamp catalogues do not make any distinction between stamps, which have been genuinely used, and those that have been cancelled to order. Obviously though, the fact that some stamps have been put on the market in large quantities cancelled to order, results in a much lower catalogue price for used copies. Although cancelled to order stamps are a source of income, this policy has created a great deal of mistrust of the issuing countries and many collectors have given up their collections of such States or do not include stamps cancelled to order in their collections.