Heres the other side !
Here is one my by favorite covers. It is addressed to Miss (Florence) LeDuc, the daughter of William Gates LeDuc who was one of the founders of Hastings, MN where I live.
The following is a picture of Miss Florence LeDuc, taken around the time that the cover was mailed.
I have written an article about the background to this cover which can be found by clicking on "An Interesting Cover to Miss LeDuc 1898".
A cute little metered postage cover with a lovely Leica slogan on advertising cover.
Striking gold!
As a Vietnam War combat veteran, I couldn’t not collect stamps and covers related to the war. And a couple of weeks ago, I struck gold with an offer from the APS Stamp Store, and it arrived last week:
At the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in northwestern Vietnam, in 1954, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces soundly defeated the French Army, composed largely of the French Foreign Legion and soldiers of French colonies, including Vietnamese soldiers from French Indochina.
In the weeks before combat began, Vietminh forces assembled a large force on the mountain peaks surrounding the French, who were waiting in the valley below. The Vietminh had performed the seemingly impossible feat of dragging large artillery pieces up the steep mountain slopes and digging them in so that they were scarcely visible to the French. The French below were well-armed with artillery as well, and had the apparent advantage of an airfield where planes carrying ammunition and supplies could land. Some additional French troops did manage to parachute into the valley.
Things began falling apart for the French when they realized that their guns could not be elevated high enough to destroy the Vietminh’s artillery pieces. Unmarked American transport planes flown by American military pilots in civilian clothing proved to be so vulnerable to Vietminh ground fire that they largely failed in their efforts to re-supply the French garrison. Dropping supplies by parachute proved nearly impossible because the planes had to fly too high to avoid being shot down. In Washington, there were serious discussions about using nuclear bombs to defeat the Vietminh.
Eventually, the Vietminh overran the French garrison; the French artillery officer who had planned the defense of the base killed himself shortly before the French surrender.
Not long after the battle, during which thousands of French soldiers were taken prisoner, North Vietnam issued a set of perforate and imperforate stamps based on photographs of a Vietminh soldier standing atop the French command bunker at Dien Bien Phu:
Previously, I had obtained complete sets of those stamps in mint condition or cancelled to order, as well as one in postally used condition, but I’d never even seen a cover that was franked with any of them, at least one available for purchase. It wasn’t cheap — US $100. Another stamp of the same design was issued for use by soldiers; it is denominated in kilos of rice.
The defeat of the Vietminh was one of the most main reasons that the United States got itself into the quagmire of the Vietnam War.
Bob
One of my favorite cover, a registered mail cover from Rabaul, New Britain of the North West Pacific Islands.
It should not surprise anyone that the envelope is addressed to Germany as New Britain was part of German New Guinea just a few years before.
Ahhh .... Antonio, that is a wonderful cover.
Looks like it has a cancel stamp from Rabaul on the back as well as the front. I wonder why they did that? Would the other cancel on the back be the receiving cancel or do you think that was applied in transit?
Regards ... Tim.
Like you assumed, it is the receiving cancel. When you look at it closely, you will see the same place name as mentioned in the address on the front: Bückeberg
I think it is funny that the N in "Britain" is mirrored.
This one probably wouldn't pass muster today
Here is a cover from my collection. It may not look very spectacular, but it is German Feldpost from the beginning of world war 2. The special thing about it is that it is complete. Not just an empty shell but with the original letter. It is difficult to read but it is the stuff Hollywood movies are made of! A soldier writes to his girlfriend, saying that he could come over during his Christmas leave to discuss their future plans. After all, it could very well be the last chance for any meeting in a long time.
He wants to choose where they will get a house, but he doesn't think there is enough time to visit her parents.
Yes, Wolfgang has it all figured out, Adelheid just has to say yes!
"Looks like it has a cancel stamp from Rabaul on the back as well as the front. "
Here is cover from my collection. Interesting to me for the following reasons:
1) earliest typewritten cover I have been able to find, coming from outside US
2) cover has a 2d halfpenny stamp but on the back a receipt stamp (I think) that says paid all 6P.
Does anyone know what the 6P means? I thought maybe 6 P.M. but seems odd to abbreviate it 6P but 6 pence does not make sense to me either.
Does anyone have an earlier typewritten cover originating from outside U.S? In U.S typewritten covers after 1885 are fairly easy to find. Earlier than that not so easy.
Banknoteguy, as it is probably a receiving stamp it could be that it is the stamp allocated to the postal clerk, so that it can be traced/recorded for postal purposes. Each clerk having an individual lettered/numbered steel.
Maybe someone else knows better, in which case I shall learn something.
It would not relate to postage cost as the abbreviation would be "d" not "p" despite Scotts insistence on early commonwealth stamps wrongly being so described.
6 P is 6:00 PM
Thanks Antonio, did think that may have been the case.
I found this Postal Card at the APS Headquarters. It is very local for me. The Van Vleck family was a well to do family in Montclair and their current estate is now a public garden.
Here is a link to their website.
https://vanvleck.org/
What I find most interesting is that when someone contracted a contagious disease, the doctors had to fill out a postal card and mail it to the local Board of Health. Take a look at the list of available diseases back in 1915. Never heard of Glanders before. Imagine that information being sent in a postcard today.
Parkinlot, here is a link to Glanders article. You would have to be very unlucky to have caught the virus.
https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/epidemiolog ...
I guess they didn't care about patient confidentiality back then. HIPAA did not come about until 1996.
@Parkinlot That is an International Machine cancel.
I love this FDC from Costa Rica. The cachet is a doctored image of the 1967 Canadian Christmas stamp.
David
Larry
Decent strike of Schuylers Lake, NY "LOV" cancel
What does LOV mean?
I figure its only natural to show my German New Guinea cover, a postal reply card.
"What does LOV mean?"
The cancel is Cole ML-211 which they state is "Love and XXX's" - Cole ML-210 is a simpler version (LOV only - no XXX's). Both are rated II+.
on Typewriters: invented in 1875
Cover featuring a picture of fellow Minnesotan Charles Lindbergh celebrating his first visit to Panama in 1928. The cover is franked with the two stamps issued to commemorate his visit to Panama. Of course Lindbergh also visited the Canal Zone during his time in Panama.
Those two stamps have the distinction of being the only two postage stamps printed by the Canal Zone for Panama.
This is a large letter to, Prince Henry, The Duke of Gloucester, 1943
This one to England bears a Number 4 Censor's marking.
Perfection machine cancel on small mourning cover - scarce thus
Constantine machine cancel - late useage
that Bermuda cover is a mere two days into the second world war (at least as far as Britain, Bermuda, Poland, and USSR are concerned). For the Czechs, Chinese, and Japanese, among others, it started earlier
This one you can tell that's from a stamp collector to a stamp collector, it may be a while before things go back to normal for stamp collectors in Ukraine.
Postcard sent via German Seapost from Monrovia, Liberia. I never did figure out why there is an official stamp on the cover.
Tony
your tag line is all too appropriate for your post
David
This is one of my favourites.
Wow ... I love that Alyn. I think I'd have that framed and on display.
This cover I like because of the small size, which would not be allowed to mail today.
Enclosure
Maybe we should Google Not Decided Warner and see how he did in life!
Registered air mail cover from Dakar, Senegal to Paris.
"that Bermuda cover is a mere two days into the second world war (at least as far as Britain, Bermuda, Poland, and USSR are concerned). For the Czechs, Chinese, and Japanese, among others, it started earlier
"
Just one more cover.
That's what I always say.
A favorite cover is a very personal choice. In that sense, nothing beats a nice cover addressed to a family member, my dad in this occasion.
Features an almost full set of the coats of arms of French Occupation of Germany (missing the elusive 10F). On a personal level, always brings warm emotions!
Dated 11/5/47
rrr....
This small cover — the smallest in my collection — was posted by a Jewish refugee incarcerated during the Second World War from the Isle au Nuix (Nut Island) in the Richelieu River, close to Lake Champlain and 30 miles/50 kilometres southeast of Montreal.
This is a contemporary view of Isle au Nuix:
From Wikipedia: “From 1940 the island was the home of an internment camp which held European Jewish refugees who had been forcibly removed from Britain. The camp was initially called Camp I, later Camp No. 41. Internees were treated as enemy aliens, and only after a year did the Canadian authorities begin to treat them as refugees. They were still not free to leave the camp, however, in some cases until 1944.”
I have read that a particularly nasty group of Nazi POWs were incarcerated on Isle aux Nuix at the same time. Apparently, the refugees and the POWs were separated only by a barbed-wire fence and were not on the best of terms!
Bob
Worth a chuckle.... a counterfeit Artcraft first day cover!
I came across this pair of covers while sorting out one of the big lots of covers for eBay. My first thought was "Cool, 2 O'Neill FDCs!" then I saw the difference! Top one was probably done on a prehistoric copier. Then cut out and pasted on a non-cacheted cover. Wouldn't fool anyone!
Kinda like a local story... a couple of idiots were running around a local town passing fake $20 bills that looked this bad. Stores accepted them to avoid confrontation, but called the police, who found them still going door to door in a shopping center. Not the brightest fellows!
One of my favorites - cancel is over painting,,,,,
One of my favorites. I was assigned to Rock Island Arsenal for 4 years. During the Civil War, the Arsenal was the site of a Prisoner Camp. This letter is from a prisoner and bears the "Examined" handstamp.
Another one from the same era. This time a Civil War Patriotic. All-Over advertising cover with a patriotic image in the upper left. It also has an enclosure indicating payment of a bill of $3.50 to the publisher of the Carthage Republican.
I would like to show this cover in memory of John Nunes..for those who never met him , John was an amazing man and stamp dealer...i never saw John other than cheerful..whether greeting us or running around take lunch orders for other dealers. At one show in Albany John ran a little raffle..you were given half a ticket stub and the other half went into the hat. Anyway..whether it was rigged or not...i won a choice of up to $25.00 worth of covers. When i saw the Shackleton cover whether it had a penquin on it or not...i told John i would take this one.
Phil
Great tribute to one of the nicest dealers I ever met. We would drive out from Syracuse once or twice a year for dinner and to buy and sell. He loved the oddball stuff. I sold him a shoebox full of ACE covers once, another time it was a large box of revenues on piece with a decent percentage of reds and greens.
i got a table for the Albany show the following month and he showed me what he had ended up with in a couple of horse trades for the revenues - he made out very well - he had the customer base - I didn't. It worked well for both of us.
Great cover, Phil! Years ago I read Endurance, the story of the Shackleton Expedition. No other adventure, not even the first moon landing or the sinking of Titanic so satisfies my desire for incredible human stories.
Every episode of the expedition constitutes an incredible adventure on its own; the sinking of Endurance, the trek across the ice to reach the relative safety of Elephant Island, the open boat voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia, and the climb up and over an ice-covered mountain all leave me thrilled, exhausted, and grateful that I wasn’t a member of the expedition!
A couple of years ago, I got back into model building after a lapse of more than 60 years (!). I’m thinking that a diorama of Endurance in its last hours, before the hull was completely crushed by the ice, would make a great project, if only I had the necessary knowledge and skill set. Maybe I should start collecting stamps and covers related to the Shackleton Expedition. Well, no, maybe not….
Bob
It didn't cost people any more to mail in within the US than to mail from the US to the Canal Zone.
For that reason, you could order magazine subscriptions at no additional costs. Of course business reply mail did not work in the Canal Zone and the sender had to add the appropriate stamp.
This one is from the days when the Netherlands were putting out nice sets and covers.
With all that's going on, some may have missed recent news about a team locating the wreck of the Endurance in the Weddell Sea, close to the location where it was crushed by ice and sank. The wreck has been preserved in a wonderful condition in extremely cold but crystal clear waters. To find the article, I Googled "Wreck of Endurance located" and an informative report from the New York Times gave background on the story of Shackleton and his crew, with images of the wreck and details of the search to locate it. I watched a news report on the BBC about 2 weeks ago which is probably available to someone better at searching than I am.
Another must read book on Shackleton's adventures, which I enjoyed tremendously, for all fans of this amazing man, is his autobiography "South!".
David
Shackleton died very young..no more worlds to conquer i guess.
Here are a few postal cards from my collection with fancy cancels.
The first card is 76 in circle from San Francisco. The second card is a Skull & Crossbones from Greenfield, MA.
i was collating U.S. covers into various cover albums and i noticed this one...i hope the censor was gentle.
Travancore postal stationary addressed to a town in nearby Cochin.
First off let me state that I really don't collect covers but I do a a fun one. I also collect toy trains although I'm more of an operator now. Some years ago on a whim, I decided to write to the Gilbert Hall of Science which was part of A.C. Gilbert's toy and train empire. Even though they had gone out of business years ago, I was curious to see if I would get a response. I did... "Out of Business"! Anyway, there's my contribution to this message thread...
John,
Those Space covers are great. How did you get the signitures?
Tim
i have been fortunate to have two stamp artists in our quiet little corner of the world. I do not know if Stephen is still in the areabut he was in 1993. If someone is interested in artist signed covers please P M me i have a couple of xtras.
i am sure many of you are familiar with James Gurney and his dinosaur books...sorry this is the only one i have of these
An 1840's letter from Montevideo, Uruguay to London.
HMS Seraph delivered Major-General Mark Clark to North Africa prior to the Torch landings. The other very interesting operation she was a part of was the delivery of the dead body of a British Officer just off the coast of Spain with a briefcase containing secret documents describing the Allie's upcoming invasion of Southern Europe on the Greek coast. These were fakes and totally fooled the Germans who moved units from Sicily, where the landing actually happened, to Greece. This was Operation Mince Meat and was the subject of a 1950s movie, "The Man Who Never Was."
An interesting commemoration of the opening the Panama Canal
Gotta comment on Paul George's cover that he sent to Gilbert Hall of Science.
I have not created many philatelic covers in my tenure as a philatelist, but those that I have are some of the most cherished!
Here's one I did, my favorite:
At the time, I was living in a 1930s farmhouse on an abandoned dairy farm, about a mile North of Chatham, PA. One day, out-of-the-blue, I got a notice that my PO was closing! It gave the date of last service. So, I got busy, and created 4 or 5 covers, just like this one. The return address is the one that was going away, and the addressee is me, at my new address. Same location, just different PO. Take note of the "NOT" that I printed on the envelope, next to the "FOREVER" on the stamp and in the same color.
The image is the interior of the Chatham PO, in its entirety. It was in the front room of a house along the main street through town. After the PO was removed, the space reverted to front room of a residence.
Chatham PO was one of the earliest in Chester County, PA, founded in 1802, and in continuous service (at various locations) until that day in June, 2009.
As a resident, I was notified of the impending closure, but these are not publicized in advance, so it's tough to catch that Last Day of Service, unless you have insider information. This would be a FUN collecting area!
-Paul
PS, here's an image of an artifact at the Chester County Historical Society:
When I was a boy I wanted to become a Postman(which I eventually became) and someone gave me a Post Office set. However until recently I have never actually seen one of those stamps used on a real Letter/Postcard.
Apparently there was toy postage here in the USA as well, though this one is not cancelled.
A chuckle... found this one with the stuffer enclosed!
And they smudged this one too!
This is a Luxembourg German-occupation cover postmarked October 16, 1940. It's a good example how language is used as a propaganda tool.
Someone — probably a German-appointed censor — neatly addressed the "problem" of the French language. Three words are struck out — pneus (tires?), huiles (oil), antitartre (rust?). The Rue (Street) of "19, Rue Goethe" is struck out and Strasse (German for Street) is added, and the "o" of Luxembourger is struck out to change the word to the Germanised "Luxemburg".
It's interesting that the cover is franked with a stamp featuring Paul von Hindenburg, who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and served as president of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934. During his presidency, he unwillingly played a key role in the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933 when, under pressure from advisers, he appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.
Hindenburg was so popular among the German people that Hitler and his merry band of thugs didn't dare stop using the set of definitive stamps featuring his portrait, and the stamps continued to be used throughout the Second World War on German mail. However, those printed after Hitler came to power feature not the "diamonds" watermark of pre-Hitler German stamps, but a series of swastikas. I've always wondered if Hindenburg knew about the swastika watermark on "his" stamps, assuming, of course, that he knew about watermarks at all.
Bob
"antitartre (rust?)"
Here's one for the records! I only found it today. It was sealed inside a first day cover from 1932. It made the cover billow out and not sit flat, so I carefully slit the edge on my paper cutter with a rotary blade. And I found this!
Classic!
She's a keeper, going right into my presidential album.. which started as an album of Inauguration covers.
First day cover of the two GB stamps celebrating the opening of the Firth Road Bridge in 1964. The 6d stamp has the blue colour missing, a rarity.
Several years ago, as I was leaving a small flea market on a Sunday afternoon, I spotted a few covers in a box and glanced through them. Just one caught my interest because of its small size and its franking, two 1 1/2-cent Martha Washington stamps from the 1938 "Prexy Issue" of definitive stamps. I don't think I have another cover franked with those stamps. And the cover came with a bonus — the original enclosure.
Not until I got home did I take a good look at the cover, and saw that it had been postmarked at 10:00 a.m. on June 6, 1944, certainly one of most famous days in world history, when the Allies assaulted beaches in Normandy on what we know as D-Day.
I am never sure how to calculate daylight saving time at various places in the world, especially since "war time" in the U.S. and Europe was a dog's breakfast of time changes that left time-keeping in disarray. But, roughly speaking, the cover was postmarked at approximately the time when Lt. Gen. Clarence Huebner, commanding officer of the First Division and in overall command at Omaha Beach, landed on "Easy Red" to set up his command post. Historian Stephen chronicled that moment, from the viewpoint of the ordinary soldier, in his book D-Day, June 6th, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War Two:
"They had no artillery or heavy mortars, only a few tanks, no communications with the naval or air forces. For the night, they were on the defensive, dug in.
"But they were there. The presence of so much brass on the beach was proof that they had secured the beachhead and won the battle."
Bob
P.S. This is an interesting web page about the timekeeping chaos of the Second World War: The Extreme Daylight Savings Time of World War II: You think one hour is bad? Europe’s clocks were in chaos during the 1940s.
"P.S. This is an interesting web page about the timekeeping chaos of the Second World War: The Extreme Daylight Savings Time of World War II: You think one hour is bad? Europe’s clocks were in chaos during the 1940s."
Interesting history, HockeyNut, but I'm not sure what your "little correction" is. I wonder, too, about the timing of the landings in Normandy from the viewpoint of the Allies. Were their clocks set to English daylight time, or perhaps to European time?
Bob
A little off course, but when you started on time adjustment it reminded me of something. I was a high school math teacher for 34 years and a problem I always assigned my better students was to find the day of the week that Columbus reached the "New World" by starting at Columbus day and working backwards. They had to take into account leap years, leap centuries (only centuries divisible by 400 are leap years), days in each month and the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar (10 days disappeared) in the 1500's. That really takes time change to the extreme. I could tell you the answer to the problem, but that takes all the fun out of it. See if you can figure it out, most of the students got it eventually!!
Note: I believe there was a Sherlock Holmes story based on a fake diary that had the year 1900 as a leap year when it really wasn't.
Harvey-
Is the answer you're looking for the day of the week Columbus would have observed on a 1492 Julian calendar when he first stumbled onto the Bahamas?
The US military bases it's "standard" time on Greenwich Mean Time, and refers to it as Zulu time. The rest of the civilian world calls it UTC, or coordinated universal time. Military time zones are lettered, GMT is assigned letter "Z" (phonetic alphabet "Zulu") Major operations planning would be based on UTC/Zulu time. Normandy is two hours ahead of GMT in the spring and summer (Central Europe Summer Time or CEST), so for local time (6:30AM landing) in Normandy, it would be 4:30 GMT. This would be officially written as 0430Z (spoken "zero-four-three-zero Zulu time") by the US forces. When referring to local time, the US military calls it "Juliet time", so Normandy "began locally" at 0630J or "zero-six-three-zero Juliet time". If the local country (in this case, France) observes daylight savings time, Juliet time reflects this change, but GMT/UTC/Zulu does not.
"Interesting history, HockeyNut, but I'm not sure what your "little correction" is. I wonder, too, about the timing of the landings in Normandy from the viewpoint of the Allies. Were their clocks set to English daylight time, or perhaps to European time?
Bob "
The Germans still have to give us those 40 minutes back, along with our grandparents' bikes!
"Is the answer you're looking for the day of the week Columbus would have observed on a 1492 Julian calendar when he first stumbled onto the Bahamas?
"
Guys, guys, GUYS!
Get out of your heads and POST A SCAN!!!
The title of this thread is "Show a cover..."
If you don't have a scanner, sit down and shut up!
Here's a recent acquisition:
Dornier-X covers can be spendy. This one was posted about 3 years after the first flight of the Dornier Do-X, which occurred on July 12, 1929. I love the cancellation, which has relevance today.
Translated, it is "Avoids Radio Interference". What a great justification to utilize a hand-written postcard!
-Paul
Sorry for participating..... is this better?
Cover from Upper Silesia.
Antonio(smauggie),
I learn something everyday. I had never heard of Upper Silesia before seeing your cover. Thank you.
From Wikipedia:
"Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic."
Regards ... Tim
I'm starting a collection of Upper Silesia so it's great to see your cover! I also collect Eastern Silesia because part of it fits in my Minkus Poland album in it's BOB section. So I decided to get the rest of the area and am missing two stamps which are a bit more expensive, #'s 31 and 32. I'm nor really sure why I bothered because, since they are examples of early overprinted stamps, almost all of them are fake. I refuse to pay much for them and consider them mostly to be album fillers. Of course, a fair bit of early Poland is the same. I'm really curious how anyone could build up a serious collection for an area like Eastern Silesia since most of the stamps are fairly cheap and getting them looked at by an expert would be silly because of the expense. Just curious what you think about collecting areas like this! At least Upper Silesia doesn't seem to have the same problem.
Scanned below is a card from my WW block collection, from Hungary, that was sent from one stamp dealer to another. I think the Hungarian dealer was offering in bulk: Hungary Scott #C35 - C44 airmail set of 10 with a 2022 CV $66.90, per set, today.
Roy will probably enjoy this one.
Linus
Linus, Wow thats an oldie dealer cover !
Wells Fargo express franking on stamped envelope from Mexico. Later overprinted for use within Mexico only. It was sent from somewhere along a Wells Fargo route to Silao.
I collect registered covers from Hong Kong, such as this one in my collection.
Linus
After seeing all these great and varied covers I thought I had better add one from my stash, doubt anyone will want to make me an offer, but it shows even our caring postal system can have an off day.
Here's a fun old commercial cover. What an enterprising guy!
He sells furniture, Victrolas and records! And does undertaking too!
Yup, she's a keeper!
Furniture and undertaking have historically gone hand-in-hand. If you think of coffins/caskets as "permanent furniture", it makes sense.
The expansion into Victrolas could have come from a personal interest, or it could have been another logical offshoot from furniture if his well-off customers were asking for specialty cabinets for their Victrolas and record collections.
I don't have the data in front of me, but I heard once that the early records (flat, one side recording, not cylinders) sold at a price that, when inflation adjusted, is equivalent to $200 today.
Roy
Expidition cover signed by Edmund Hillary of Everest fame
Advertising cover with wartime slogan postmark
Another one
Mario Baldi was an Austria-born photographer. He was famous in Brazil where he initiated and practiced modern photojournalism, in particuliar with the natives. (see this Web page for those who understand Portuguese: http://fotografia.povosindigenas.com.br/mario-baldi/)
The letter was sent from his native city, Salzburg, to his patron, D. Pedro de Orleans e Bragança, the nephew of D. Pedro II, last emperor of Brazil who went in exile in France. At that time of this enveloppe Pedro de Orleans e Braganza was in France at the chateau d'Eu, Normandy, were one of Pedro II's daughter was married to the Comte d'Eu.
Unfortunately I do not have the content of the letter. May be a request for more support?
When the Nazis attacked and occupied Poland in 1939, Polish naval or merchant marine vessels already at sea (and, presumably some who left escaped Poland before being boarded by German forces) came to represent Poland’s free government.
This “rarish” cover is franked by stamps issued in 1943 by the Exile Government of Poland. It was posted on board a Polish warship or merchant vessel, the only venues where the stamps were accepted as payment for postage, although other nation’s postal services accepted them as valid postage, hence their inclusion in standard catalogues. The stamps on this cover represent the second set of stamps issued by the exile government; the first was issued in 1941. The cover was postmarked on April 6, 1944.
Here's a larger image of the stamps:
The website of the Scouts on Stamps International Society includes an interesting, short article about the stamps, by Edward Nowak, Sr., titled Stamp Issues by the Polish Government in Exile.
Bob
Guat1
Guat2
Guat 3
Here is one that pre-dates the use of Postage Stamps. A cover to Lancashire back stamped BISHOPMARK 15/AP in a single circle.
Postcard sent from the German colony of Cameroon.
Front
smauggie, years ago my wife found a card from German New Guinea in a 25 cent box..i displayed it on the internet and a lawyer in California said "thats a $225.00 card". I told himi would take $150.00 and he sent me a check..i still have the envelope he sent it in. Should i give my wife a finders fee ?
"Should i give my wife a finders fee?"
Antonio, with my Dutch Indies covers and postcards ..i tend to top out in the $16.00 range...but those are part of my collection and i do not sell them. I am afraid if its a $150 cover...i would sell.
Here are a few covers that I have accumulated over the years. I would bet Tom will like the first one
This Postcard postmarked on September 17, 1902 is franked with Scott# 300. On the back is pictured the U.S. Indian School located in Wahpeton, ND which is where I live. I grew up just a few blocks south of the manure pile from their dairy operation. We didn't want a north wind in the summer. This is also where we got our sugar cubes with Dr. Salk's polio vaccine.
The next is an Aerogramme from New Zealand celebrating Christmas. I can't make out the postmark.
The last cover is a Spanish Consular cover mailed from Philadelphia to Easton, PA
in 1943, Britain launched Operation Taberin to set up a series of bases on the Antarctic peninsula. These bases had rudimentary post offices and Falkland Island stamps were overprinted with the different post offices. These stamps on this cover are from the Graham Land Peninsula post office at the base at Hope bay (Base A). Envelopes were collected and sent to the post office at Post Stanley, Falkland Islands for shipment to Britain.
One of my collections is called "Mail to Famous People"
Here is a page to appeal to our US members:
and this one has "pride of place" in my own heart:
Roy
Well can not leave behind, can I?
Here some covers from Eastern Germany to Egypt but the first one has been through the railway mail.
Front
Back
Here the rest.
From Eastern Germany to Egypt :
Front
Back
Front
Back
Front
Back
Front
Back
Front
Back
Front
Back
Front
Back
Front
Back
On the back of that last cover there is a label that says Tauchsendung. What is that for?
Hello smauggie,
It does not say Tauchsendung but Tauschsendung.
The barter control stamp was a philatelic tool commonly used in the GDR for exchanging freshly minted GDR postage stamps abroad, which was only open to members of the philatelists' association in the GDR's cultural association. As early as 1922 to 1934, additional fee stamps for stamp exchange shipments abroad were referred to as exchange control stamps in the Soviet Union. In the short-lived Far Eastern Republic such stamps were in use in the spring and summer of 1923. The GDR stamps of the same name probably go back to them, but unlike the Soviet variant, they were not subject to a fee.
Source Wikipedia
I'm cheating a bit, but I've just virtually added this FDC to my collection of Algerian War covers, "virtually" because it's either in Australia or on a slow boat to Canada, and isn't expected to arrive until June!
When the Algerian War between France and Algerian separatists ended in 1962, eight years after it began, Algerian postal officials ordered the production and use of overprinted French stamps, which would eventually be replaced by the first home-grown stamps to be issued by the newly independent country. The overprints were to consist of opaque bars of ink to obliterate the words "REPUBLIC FRANCAISE," and, near the centre of the stamps, the initials "E.A." (the initials of Etat Algerien — Algerian State.
Overprints of that type are not unusual, but in Algeria an interesting departure from standard postal practice occurred: instead of having French stamps overprinted by centralized printing agencies and distributed throughout the country, postmasters were told to create locally-made overprints, presumably from existing stocks of stamps, using rubber stamps or whatever printing technologies they had access to. As a result, it seems that every post office in the country issued its own version of the overprint.
The "E.A." overprints consist of a mind-boggling variety. Some seem to be printed by a letterpress, others with rubber stamps, still others with pens. Some overprints are missing one or both bars. The space between the "E" and the "A" varies widely. Some overprints were under-inked, some over-inked, some inverted. Most were made with devices which included both letters, but some seem to have the letters printed separately. Some overprints are parallel with the top and bottom edges of the stamps while others are at an angle. One example (still in transit from France) includes a hyphen "E.-A." and another is underlined with what appears to be a slanted pen stroke. Most overprints are black, but some are blue and one is in red. The overprint on one pair of stamps is oriented vertically instead of horizontally.
Here are examples of some of overprint types:
I am puzzled by one overprint that includes an accent aigu over the E:
Can someone please enlighten me about the use of that accent?
It seems certain that at least some of the overprints were created exclusively for the philatelic market, which would explain why I haven't encountered them actually used on mail. I have wondered whether forgeries of these stamps exist. It seems almost certain, since some have catalogue values in double digits. On the other hand, Algeria is not the most collectible of countries in the West, probably because of the difficulty that translation entails.
One of the things that interests me about the Algerian War is that its circumstances almost perfectly matched both the First Indochina War and the Vietnam War. Both wars involved insurgents in French Colonies (Algeria and the former French Indochina) who were fighting for independence. Both wars were asymmetrical wars fought by a European army equipped with modern military equipment against insurgents operating largely as guerrillas; the French army made wide use of helicopter borne assaults and medical evacuations, flying Sikorsky UH-34 helicopters, the same helicopters that the Americans used in the Vietnam War. Some of the French troops who fought in the First Indochina War, which ended in 1954 with the fall of the French fortress at Dien Bien Phu, were taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. When survivors were released, some of them were repatriated to France, travelling on the American hospital ship, U.S.S. Haven. No doubt some of those soldiers, many of whom were members of the French Foreign Legion, soon were engaged in combat in Algeria. This postcard was posted by an American crewman on Haven as its approached Marseille with its contingent of former French POWs:
Other commonalities between the Vietnam War and the Algerian War: both the United States and France suffered violent domestic clashes between pro-war Hawks and anti-war Doves, and perpetrated the murder of civilians by government troops.
Bob
"Can someone please enlighten me about the use of that accent?"
Roy said, "The use of the accent is correct."
Which begs the question, are all of the other "E.A." overprints incorrect? I expect that overprints in general aren't expected to be grammatically correct, rather like news headlines that actually are sentences but don't have end punctuation.
Bob
From "The Holocaust Stamps Project" to me today, on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day, linked to the Warsaw Uprising). Note that the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27th) is tied to the liberation of Auschwitz.
I created this customized cover and my local postal outlet was happy to add the CDS and let me take it with me (instead of putting it into the mail system).
I was invited to a special commemoration event at the Jewish Community Centre tonight (incredibly moving testimonies, readings, and a documentary short-film) where I showed this. Based on the response I think I might do more such customized covers for people on request, going forward.
Dave.
"I created this customized cover "
And one from Carcross, Yukon
Forgive my ignorance, Jules, but what language is that? Looks like cyrillic letters, or perhaps Greek.
Cheers - Neville
That’s a great way to get cool postmarks Jules!
"what language is that? Looks like cyrillic letters, or perhaps Greek."
Usually in French we do not use accents on uppercase letters. For me the accentued uppercase e (É) looks suspicious and I think it might be a forgery. However, now under the influence of US made (or at least designed) computers, tablets and the likes, it is easy to put accents on capital letters. Best example: look on the first line.
Usually in French we do not use accents on uppercase letters. For me the accentued uppercase e (É) looks suspicious and I think it might be a forgery. However, now under the influence of US made (or at least designed) computers, tablets and the likes, it is easy to put accents on capital letters. Best example: look on the first line.
@Leverage: Thanks for this additional information, but I’m not sure what you are referring to when you write, “…look on the first line.”
Bob
I meant the first line of my post in which I easily typed É. In a French mechanical typewriter in was impossible a while ago.
Here's a cover I received the other day. I have a few mourning covers in my New Jersey collection, and my motivation for this one was the Dias Creek cancel, where it's also seen as Dais Creek.
Back in the day before email, or even phones, receiving a black border letter in your mail could ruin your whole day! That was how people learned of relatives or friends passing. While I have a few in my collection, I had never owned one with the letter inside.
It was written on May 8, 1889 and postmarked the next day. Figure the letter was delivered on May 10, and the funeral was the 11th. Local trip in same county.
And here's the same town with the Dais Creek spelling. The John Kay book on New Jersey post office history doesn't mention the spelling change.
Unless I nave gone blind are they not all spelled DIAS? All four read the same.
Time to lock this thread and start a second one. Taking a long time to load.
Roy
Things seem a little quiet...anyone interested in posting covers from their collection. I will start with a 1937 Dutch Indies cover.
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Heres the other side !
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Here is one my by favorite covers. It is addressed to Miss (Florence) LeDuc, the daughter of William Gates LeDuc who was one of the founders of Hastings, MN where I live.
The following is a picture of Miss Florence LeDuc, taken around the time that the cover was mailed.
I have written an article about the background to this cover which can be found by clicking on "An Interesting Cover to Miss LeDuc 1898".
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A cute little metered postage cover with a lovely Leica slogan on advertising cover.
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Striking gold!
As a Vietnam War combat veteran, I couldn’t not collect stamps and covers related to the war. And a couple of weeks ago, I struck gold with an offer from the APS Stamp Store, and it arrived last week:
At the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in northwestern Vietnam, in 1954, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces soundly defeated the French Army, composed largely of the French Foreign Legion and soldiers of French colonies, including Vietnamese soldiers from French Indochina.
In the weeks before combat began, Vietminh forces assembled a large force on the mountain peaks surrounding the French, who were waiting in the valley below. The Vietminh had performed the seemingly impossible feat of dragging large artillery pieces up the steep mountain slopes and digging them in so that they were scarcely visible to the French. The French below were well-armed with artillery as well, and had the apparent advantage of an airfield where planes carrying ammunition and supplies could land. Some additional French troops did manage to parachute into the valley.
Things began falling apart for the French when they realized that their guns could not be elevated high enough to destroy the Vietminh’s artillery pieces. Unmarked American transport planes flown by American military pilots in civilian clothing proved to be so vulnerable to Vietminh ground fire that they largely failed in their efforts to re-supply the French garrison. Dropping supplies by parachute proved nearly impossible because the planes had to fly too high to avoid being shot down. In Washington, there were serious discussions about using nuclear bombs to defeat the Vietminh.
Eventually, the Vietminh overran the French garrison; the French artillery officer who had planned the defense of the base killed himself shortly before the French surrender.
Not long after the battle, during which thousands of French soldiers were taken prisoner, North Vietnam issued a set of perforate and imperforate stamps based on photographs of a Vietminh soldier standing atop the French command bunker at Dien Bien Phu:
Previously, I had obtained complete sets of those stamps in mint condition or cancelled to order, as well as one in postally used condition, but I’d never even seen a cover that was franked with any of them, at least one available for purchase. It wasn’t cheap — US $100. Another stamp of the same design was issued for use by soldiers; it is denominated in kilos of rice.
The defeat of the Vietminh was one of the most main reasons that the United States got itself into the quagmire of the Vietnam War.
Bob
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One of my favorite cover, a registered mail cover from Rabaul, New Britain of the North West Pacific Islands.
It should not surprise anyone that the envelope is addressed to Germany as New Britain was part of German New Guinea just a few years before.
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Ahhh .... Antonio, that is a wonderful cover.
Looks like it has a cancel stamp from Rabaul on the back as well as the front. I wonder why they did that? Would the other cancel on the back be the receiving cancel or do you think that was applied in transit?
Regards ... Tim.
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Like you assumed, it is the receiving cancel. When you look at it closely, you will see the same place name as mentioned in the address on the front: Bückeberg
I think it is funny that the N in "Britain" is mirrored.
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This one probably wouldn't pass muster today
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Here is a cover from my collection. It may not look very spectacular, but it is German Feldpost from the beginning of world war 2. The special thing about it is that it is complete. Not just an empty shell but with the original letter. It is difficult to read but it is the stuff Hollywood movies are made of! A soldier writes to his girlfriend, saying that he could come over during his Christmas leave to discuss their future plans. After all, it could very well be the last chance for any meeting in a long time.
He wants to choose where they will get a house, but he doesn't think there is enough time to visit her parents.
Yes, Wolfgang has it all figured out, Adelheid just has to say yes!
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"Looks like it has a cancel stamp from Rabaul on the back as well as the front. "
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Here is cover from my collection. Interesting to me for the following reasons:
1) earliest typewritten cover I have been able to find, coming from outside US
2) cover has a 2d halfpenny stamp but on the back a receipt stamp (I think) that says paid all 6P.
Does anyone know what the 6P means? I thought maybe 6 P.M. but seems odd to abbreviate it 6P but 6 pence does not make sense to me either.
Does anyone have an earlier typewritten cover originating from outside U.S? In U.S typewritten covers after 1885 are fairly easy to find. Earlier than that not so easy.
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Banknoteguy, as it is probably a receiving stamp it could be that it is the stamp allocated to the postal clerk, so that it can be traced/recorded for postal purposes. Each clerk having an individual lettered/numbered steel.
Maybe someone else knows better, in which case I shall learn something.
It would not relate to postage cost as the abbreviation would be "d" not "p" despite Scotts insistence on early commonwealth stamps wrongly being so described.
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6 P is 6:00 PM
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Thanks Antonio, did think that may have been the case.
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I found this Postal Card at the APS Headquarters. It is very local for me. The Van Vleck family was a well to do family in Montclair and their current estate is now a public garden.
Here is a link to their website.
https://vanvleck.org/
What I find most interesting is that when someone contracted a contagious disease, the doctors had to fill out a postal card and mail it to the local Board of Health. Take a look at the list of available diseases back in 1915. Never heard of Glanders before. Imagine that information being sent in a postcard today.
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Parkinlot, here is a link to Glanders article. You would have to be very unlucky to have caught the virus.
https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/epidemiolog ...
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I guess they didn't care about patient confidentiality back then. HIPAA did not come about until 1996.
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@Parkinlot That is an International Machine cancel.
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I love this FDC from Costa Rica. The cachet is a doctored image of the 1967 Canadian Christmas stamp.
David
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Decent strike of Schuylers Lake, NY "LOV" cancel
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What does LOV mean?
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I figure its only natural to show my German New Guinea cover, a postal reply card.
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"What does LOV mean?"
The cancel is Cole ML-211 which they state is "Love and XXX's" - Cole ML-210 is a simpler version (LOV only - no XXX's). Both are rated II+.
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on Typewriters: invented in 1875
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Cover featuring a picture of fellow Minnesotan Charles Lindbergh celebrating his first visit to Panama in 1928. The cover is franked with the two stamps issued to commemorate his visit to Panama. Of course Lindbergh also visited the Canal Zone during his time in Panama.
Those two stamps have the distinction of being the only two postage stamps printed by the Canal Zone for Panama.
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This is a large letter to, Prince Henry, The Duke of Gloucester, 1943
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This one to England bears a Number 4 Censor's marking.
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Perfection machine cancel on small mourning cover - scarce thus
Constantine machine cancel - late useage
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that Bermuda cover is a mere two days into the second world war (at least as far as Britain, Bermuda, Poland, and USSR are concerned). For the Czechs, Chinese, and Japanese, among others, it started earlier
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This one you can tell that's from a stamp collector to a stamp collector, it may be a while before things go back to normal for stamp collectors in Ukraine.
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Postcard sent via German Seapost from Monrovia, Liberia. I never did figure out why there is an official stamp on the cover.
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Tony
your tag line is all too appropriate for your post
David
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This is one of my favourites.
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Wow ... I love that Alyn. I think I'd have that framed and on display.
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This cover I like because of the small size, which would not be allowed to mail today.
Enclosure
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Maybe we should Google Not Decided Warner and see how he did in life!
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Registered air mail cover from Dakar, Senegal to Paris.
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"that Bermuda cover is a mere two days into the second world war (at least as far as Britain, Bermuda, Poland, and USSR are concerned). For the Czechs, Chinese, and Japanese, among others, it started earlier
"
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Just one more cover.
That's what I always say.
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A favorite cover is a very personal choice. In that sense, nothing beats a nice cover addressed to a family member, my dad in this occasion.
Features an almost full set of the coats of arms of French Occupation of Germany (missing the elusive 10F). On a personal level, always brings warm emotions!
Dated 11/5/47
rrr....
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This small cover — the smallest in my collection — was posted by a Jewish refugee incarcerated during the Second World War from the Isle au Nuix (Nut Island) in the Richelieu River, close to Lake Champlain and 30 miles/50 kilometres southeast of Montreal.
This is a contemporary view of Isle au Nuix:
From Wikipedia: “From 1940 the island was the home of an internment camp which held European Jewish refugees who had been forcibly removed from Britain. The camp was initially called Camp I, later Camp No. 41. Internees were treated as enemy aliens, and only after a year did the Canadian authorities begin to treat them as refugees. They were still not free to leave the camp, however, in some cases until 1944.”
I have read that a particularly nasty group of Nazi POWs were incarcerated on Isle aux Nuix at the same time. Apparently, the refugees and the POWs were separated only by a barbed-wire fence and were not on the best of terms!
Bob
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Worth a chuckle.... a counterfeit Artcraft first day cover!
I came across this pair of covers while sorting out one of the big lots of covers for eBay. My first thought was "Cool, 2 O'Neill FDCs!" then I saw the difference! Top one was probably done on a prehistoric copier. Then cut out and pasted on a non-cacheted cover. Wouldn't fool anyone!
Kinda like a local story... a couple of idiots were running around a local town passing fake $20 bills that looked this bad. Stores accepted them to avoid confrontation, but called the police, who found them still going door to door in a shopping center. Not the brightest fellows!
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One of my favorites - cancel is over painting,,,,,
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One of my favorites. I was assigned to Rock Island Arsenal for 4 years. During the Civil War, the Arsenal was the site of a Prisoner Camp. This letter is from a prisoner and bears the "Examined" handstamp.
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Another one from the same era. This time a Civil War Patriotic. All-Over advertising cover with a patriotic image in the upper left. It also has an enclosure indicating payment of a bill of $3.50 to the publisher of the Carthage Republican.
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I would like to show this cover in memory of John Nunes..for those who never met him , John was an amazing man and stamp dealer...i never saw John other than cheerful..whether greeting us or running around take lunch orders for other dealers. At one show in Albany John ran a little raffle..you were given half a ticket stub and the other half went into the hat. Anyway..whether it was rigged or not...i won a choice of up to $25.00 worth of covers. When i saw the Shackleton cover whether it had a penquin on it or not...i told John i would take this one.
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Phil
Great tribute to one of the nicest dealers I ever met. We would drive out from Syracuse once or twice a year for dinner and to buy and sell. He loved the oddball stuff. I sold him a shoebox full of ACE covers once, another time it was a large box of revenues on piece with a decent percentage of reds and greens.
i got a table for the Albany show the following month and he showed me what he had ended up with in a couple of horse trades for the revenues - he made out very well - he had the customer base - I didn't. It worked well for both of us.
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Great cover, Phil! Years ago I read Endurance, the story of the Shackleton Expedition. No other adventure, not even the first moon landing or the sinking of Titanic so satisfies my desire for incredible human stories.
Every episode of the expedition constitutes an incredible adventure on its own; the sinking of Endurance, the trek across the ice to reach the relative safety of Elephant Island, the open boat voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia, and the climb up and over an ice-covered mountain all leave me thrilled, exhausted, and grateful that I wasn’t a member of the expedition!
A couple of years ago, I got back into model building after a lapse of more than 60 years (!). I’m thinking that a diorama of Endurance in its last hours, before the hull was completely crushed by the ice, would make a great project, if only I had the necessary knowledge and skill set. Maybe I should start collecting stamps and covers related to the Shackleton Expedition. Well, no, maybe not….
Bob
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It didn't cost people any more to mail in within the US than to mail from the US to the Canal Zone.
For that reason, you could order magazine subscriptions at no additional costs. Of course business reply mail did not work in the Canal Zone and the sender had to add the appropriate stamp.
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This one is from the days when the Netherlands were putting out nice sets and covers.
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With all that's going on, some may have missed recent news about a team locating the wreck of the Endurance in the Weddell Sea, close to the location where it was crushed by ice and sank. The wreck has been preserved in a wonderful condition in extremely cold but crystal clear waters. To find the article, I Googled "Wreck of Endurance located" and an informative report from the New York Times gave background on the story of Shackleton and his crew, with images of the wreck and details of the search to locate it. I watched a news report on the BBC about 2 weeks ago which is probably available to someone better at searching than I am.
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Another must read book on Shackleton's adventures, which I enjoyed tremendously, for all fans of this amazing man, is his autobiography "South!".
David
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Shackleton died very young..no more worlds to conquer i guess.
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Here are a few postal cards from my collection with fancy cancels.
The first card is 76 in circle from San Francisco. The second card is a Skull & Crossbones from Greenfield, MA.
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i was collating U.S. covers into various cover albums and i noticed this one...i hope the censor was gentle.
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Travancore postal stationary addressed to a town in nearby Cochin.
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First off let me state that I really don't collect covers but I do a a fun one. I also collect toy trains although I'm more of an operator now. Some years ago on a whim, I decided to write to the Gilbert Hall of Science which was part of A.C. Gilbert's toy and train empire. Even though they had gone out of business years ago, I was curious to see if I would get a response. I did... "Out of Business"! Anyway, there's my contribution to this message thread...
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John,
Those Space covers are great. How did you get the signitures?
Tim
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i have been fortunate to have two stamp artists in our quiet little corner of the world. I do not know if Stephen is still in the areabut he was in 1993. If someone is interested in artist signed covers please P M me i have a couple of xtras.
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i am sure many of you are familiar with James Gurney and his dinosaur books...sorry this is the only one i have of these
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An 1840's letter from Montevideo, Uruguay to London.
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HMS Seraph delivered Major-General Mark Clark to North Africa prior to the Torch landings. The other very interesting operation she was a part of was the delivery of the dead body of a British Officer just off the coast of Spain with a briefcase containing secret documents describing the Allie's upcoming invasion of Southern Europe on the Greek coast. These were fakes and totally fooled the Germans who moved units from Sicily, where the landing actually happened, to Greece. This was Operation Mince Meat and was the subject of a 1950s movie, "The Man Who Never Was."
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An interesting commemoration of the opening the Panama Canal
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Gotta comment on Paul George's cover that he sent to Gilbert Hall of Science.
I have not created many philatelic covers in my tenure as a philatelist, but those that I have are some of the most cherished!
Here's one I did, my favorite:
At the time, I was living in a 1930s farmhouse on an abandoned dairy farm, about a mile North of Chatham, PA. One day, out-of-the-blue, I got a notice that my PO was closing! It gave the date of last service. So, I got busy, and created 4 or 5 covers, just like this one. The return address is the one that was going away, and the addressee is me, at my new address. Same location, just different PO. Take note of the "NOT" that I printed on the envelope, next to the "FOREVER" on the stamp and in the same color.
The image is the interior of the Chatham PO, in its entirety. It was in the front room of a house along the main street through town. After the PO was removed, the space reverted to front room of a residence.
Chatham PO was one of the earliest in Chester County, PA, founded in 1802, and in continuous service (at various locations) until that day in June, 2009.
As a resident, I was notified of the impending closure, but these are not publicized in advance, so it's tough to catch that Last Day of Service, unless you have insider information. This would be a FUN collecting area!
-Paul
PS, here's an image of an artifact at the Chester County Historical Society:
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When I was a boy I wanted to become a Postman(which I eventually became) and someone gave me a Post Office set. However until recently I have never actually seen one of those stamps used on a real Letter/Postcard.
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Apparently there was toy postage here in the USA as well, though this one is not cancelled.
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A chuckle... found this one with the stuffer enclosed!
And they smudged this one too!
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This is a Luxembourg German-occupation cover postmarked October 16, 1940. It's a good example how language is used as a propaganda tool.
Someone — probably a German-appointed censor — neatly addressed the "problem" of the French language. Three words are struck out — pneus (tires?), huiles (oil), antitartre (rust?). The Rue (Street) of "19, Rue Goethe" is struck out and Strasse (German for Street) is added, and the "o" of Luxembourger is struck out to change the word to the Germanised "Luxemburg".
It's interesting that the cover is franked with a stamp featuring Paul von Hindenburg, who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and served as president of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934. During his presidency, he unwillingly played a key role in the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933 when, under pressure from advisers, he appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.
Hindenburg was so popular among the German people that Hitler and his merry band of thugs didn't dare stop using the set of definitive stamps featuring his portrait, and the stamps continued to be used throughout the Second World War on German mail. However, those printed after Hitler came to power feature not the "diamonds" watermark of pre-Hitler German stamps, but a series of swastikas. I've always wondered if Hindenburg knew about the swastika watermark on "his" stamps, assuming, of course, that he knew about watermarks at all.
Bob
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"antitartre (rust?)"
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Here's one for the records! I only found it today. It was sealed inside a first day cover from 1932. It made the cover billow out and not sit flat, so I carefully slit the edge on my paper cutter with a rotary blade. And I found this!
Classic!
She's a keeper, going right into my presidential album.. which started as an album of Inauguration covers.
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First day cover of the two GB stamps celebrating the opening of the Firth Road Bridge in 1964. The 6d stamp has the blue colour missing, a rarity.
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Several years ago, as I was leaving a small flea market on a Sunday afternoon, I spotted a few covers in a box and glanced through them. Just one caught my interest because of its small size and its franking, two 1 1/2-cent Martha Washington stamps from the 1938 "Prexy Issue" of definitive stamps. I don't think I have another cover franked with those stamps. And the cover came with a bonus — the original enclosure.
Not until I got home did I take a good look at the cover, and saw that it had been postmarked at 10:00 a.m. on June 6, 1944, certainly one of most famous days in world history, when the Allies assaulted beaches in Normandy on what we know as D-Day.
I am never sure how to calculate daylight saving time at various places in the world, especially since "war time" in the U.S. and Europe was a dog's breakfast of time changes that left time-keeping in disarray. But, roughly speaking, the cover was postmarked at approximately the time when Lt. Gen. Clarence Huebner, commanding officer of the First Division and in overall command at Omaha Beach, landed on "Easy Red" to set up his command post. Historian Stephen chronicled that moment, from the viewpoint of the ordinary soldier, in his book D-Day, June 6th, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War Two:
"They had no artillery or heavy mortars, only a few tanks, no communications with the naval or air forces. For the night, they were on the defensive, dug in.
"But they were there. The presence of so much brass on the beach was proof that they had secured the beachhead and won the battle."
Bob
P.S. This is an interesting web page about the timekeeping chaos of the Second World War: The Extreme Daylight Savings Time of World War II: You think one hour is bad? Europe’s clocks were in chaos during the 1940s.
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"P.S. This is an interesting web page about the timekeeping chaos of the Second World War: The Extreme Daylight Savings Time of World War II: You think one hour is bad? Europe’s clocks were in chaos during the 1940s."
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Interesting history, HockeyNut, but I'm not sure what your "little correction" is. I wonder, too, about the timing of the landings in Normandy from the viewpoint of the Allies. Were their clocks set to English daylight time, or perhaps to European time?
Bob
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A little off course, but when you started on time adjustment it reminded me of something. I was a high school math teacher for 34 years and a problem I always assigned my better students was to find the day of the week that Columbus reached the "New World" by starting at Columbus day and working backwards. They had to take into account leap years, leap centuries (only centuries divisible by 400 are leap years), days in each month and the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar (10 days disappeared) in the 1500's. That really takes time change to the extreme. I could tell you the answer to the problem, but that takes all the fun out of it. See if you can figure it out, most of the students got it eventually!!
Note: I believe there was a Sherlock Holmes story based on a fake diary that had the year 1900 as a leap year when it really wasn't.
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
Harvey-
Is the answer you're looking for the day of the week Columbus would have observed on a 1492 Julian calendar when he first stumbled onto the Bahamas?
The US military bases it's "standard" time on Greenwich Mean Time, and refers to it as Zulu time. The rest of the civilian world calls it UTC, or coordinated universal time. Military time zones are lettered, GMT is assigned letter "Z" (phonetic alphabet "Zulu") Major operations planning would be based on UTC/Zulu time. Normandy is two hours ahead of GMT in the spring and summer (Central Europe Summer Time or CEST), so for local time (6:30AM landing) in Normandy, it would be 4:30 GMT. This would be officially written as 0430Z (spoken "zero-four-three-zero Zulu time") by the US forces. When referring to local time, the US military calls it "Juliet time", so Normandy "began locally" at 0630J or "zero-six-three-zero Juliet time". If the local country (in this case, France) observes daylight savings time, Juliet time reflects this change, but GMT/UTC/Zulu does not.
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
"Interesting history, HockeyNut, but I'm not sure what your "little correction" is. I wonder, too, about the timing of the landings in Normandy from the viewpoint of the Allies. Were their clocks set to English daylight time, or perhaps to European time?
Bob "
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
The Germans still have to give us those 40 minutes back, along with our grandparents' bikes!
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"Is the answer you're looking for the day of the week Columbus would have observed on a 1492 Julian calendar when he first stumbled onto the Bahamas?
"
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
Guys, guys, GUYS!
Get out of your heads and POST A SCAN!!!
The title of this thread is "Show a cover..."
If you don't have a scanner, sit down and shut up!
Here's a recent acquisition:
Dornier-X covers can be spendy. This one was posted about 3 years after the first flight of the Dornier Do-X, which occurred on July 12, 1929. I love the cancellation, which has relevance today.
Translated, it is "Avoids Radio Interference". What a great justification to utilize a hand-written postcard!
-Paul
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Sorry for participating..... is this better?
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
Cover from Upper Silesia.
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Antonio(smauggie),
I learn something everyday. I had never heard of Upper Silesia before seeing your cover. Thank you.
From Wikipedia:
"Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic."
Regards ... Tim
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I'm starting a collection of Upper Silesia so it's great to see your cover! I also collect Eastern Silesia because part of it fits in my Minkus Poland album in it's BOB section. So I decided to get the rest of the area and am missing two stamps which are a bit more expensive, #'s 31 and 32. I'm nor really sure why I bothered because, since they are examples of early overprinted stamps, almost all of them are fake. I refuse to pay much for them and consider them mostly to be album fillers. Of course, a fair bit of early Poland is the same. I'm really curious how anyone could build up a serious collection for an area like Eastern Silesia since most of the stamps are fairly cheap and getting them looked at by an expert would be silly because of the expense. Just curious what you think about collecting areas like this! At least Upper Silesia doesn't seem to have the same problem.
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Scanned below is a card from my WW block collection, from Hungary, that was sent from one stamp dealer to another. I think the Hungarian dealer was offering in bulk: Hungary Scott #C35 - C44 airmail set of 10 with a 2022 CV $66.90, per set, today.
Roy will probably enjoy this one.
Linus
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Linus, Wow thats an oldie dealer cover !
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Wells Fargo express franking on stamped envelope from Mexico. Later overprinted for use within Mexico only. It was sent from somewhere along a Wells Fargo route to Silao.
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I collect registered covers from Hong Kong, such as this one in my collection.
Linus
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After seeing all these great and varied covers I thought I had better add one from my stash, doubt anyone will want to make me an offer, but it shows even our caring postal system can have an off day.
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Here's a fun old commercial cover. What an enterprising guy!
He sells furniture, Victrolas and records! And does undertaking too!
Yup, she's a keeper!
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Furniture and undertaking have historically gone hand-in-hand. If you think of coffins/caskets as "permanent furniture", it makes sense.
The expansion into Victrolas could have come from a personal interest, or it could have been another logical offshoot from furniture if his well-off customers were asking for specialty cabinets for their Victrolas and record collections.
I don't have the data in front of me, but I heard once that the early records (flat, one side recording, not cylinders) sold at a price that, when inflation adjusted, is equivalent to $200 today.
Roy
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
Expidition cover signed by Edmund Hillary of Everest fame
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Advertising cover with wartime slogan postmark
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Another one
Mario Baldi was an Austria-born photographer. He was famous in Brazil where he initiated and practiced modern photojournalism, in particuliar with the natives. (see this Web page for those who understand Portuguese: http://fotografia.povosindigenas.com.br/mario-baldi/)
The letter was sent from his native city, Salzburg, to his patron, D. Pedro de Orleans e Bragança, the nephew of D. Pedro II, last emperor of Brazil who went in exile in France. At that time of this enveloppe Pedro de Orleans e Braganza was in France at the chateau d'Eu, Normandy, were one of Pedro II's daughter was married to the Comte d'Eu.
Unfortunately I do not have the content of the letter. May be a request for more support?
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When the Nazis attacked and occupied Poland in 1939, Polish naval or merchant marine vessels already at sea (and, presumably some who left escaped Poland before being boarded by German forces) came to represent Poland’s free government.
This “rarish” cover is franked by stamps issued in 1943 by the Exile Government of Poland. It was posted on board a Polish warship or merchant vessel, the only venues where the stamps were accepted as payment for postage, although other nation’s postal services accepted them as valid postage, hence their inclusion in standard catalogues. The stamps on this cover represent the second set of stamps issued by the exile government; the first was issued in 1941. The cover was postmarked on April 6, 1944.
Here's a larger image of the stamps:
The website of the Scouts on Stamps International Society includes an interesting, short article about the stamps, by Edward Nowak, Sr., titled Stamp Issues by the Polish Government in Exile.
Bob
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Guat1
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Guat2
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Guat 3
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Postcard sent from the German colony of Cameroon.
Front
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smauggie, years ago my wife found a card from German New Guinea in a 25 cent box..i displayed it on the internet and a lawyer in California said "thats a $225.00 card". I told himi would take $150.00 and he sent me a check..i still have the envelope he sent it in. Should i give my wife a finders fee ?
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"Should i give my wife a finders fee?"
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Antonio, with my Dutch Indies covers and postcards ..i tend to top out in the $16.00 range...but those are part of my collection and i do not sell them. I am afraid if its a $150 cover...i would sell.
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Here are a few covers that I have accumulated over the years. I would bet Tom will like the first one
This Postcard postmarked on September 17, 1902 is franked with Scott# 300. On the back is pictured the U.S. Indian School located in Wahpeton, ND which is where I live. I grew up just a few blocks south of the manure pile from their dairy operation. We didn't want a north wind in the summer. This is also where we got our sugar cubes with Dr. Salk's polio vaccine.
The next is an Aerogramme from New Zealand celebrating Christmas. I can't make out the postmark.
The last cover is a Spanish Consular cover mailed from Philadelphia to Easton, PA
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in 1943, Britain launched Operation Taberin to set up a series of bases on the Antarctic peninsula. These bases had rudimentary post offices and Falkland Island stamps were overprinted with the different post offices. These stamps on this cover are from the Graham Land Peninsula post office at the base at Hope bay (Base A). Envelopes were collected and sent to the post office at Post Stanley, Falkland Islands for shipment to Britain.
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One of my collections is called "Mail to Famous People"
Here is a page to appeal to our US members:
and this one has "pride of place" in my own heart:
Roy
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Well can not leave behind, can I?
Here some covers from Eastern Germany to Egypt but the first one has been through the railway mail.
Front
Back
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Here the rest.
From Eastern Germany to Egypt :
Front
Back
Front
Back
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Front
Back
Front
Back
Front
Back
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Front
Back
Front
Back
Front
Back
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On the back of that last cover there is a label that says Tauchsendung. What is that for?
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Hello smauggie,
It does not say Tauchsendung but Tauschsendung.
The barter control stamp was a philatelic tool commonly used in the GDR for exchanging freshly minted GDR postage stamps abroad, which was only open to members of the philatelists' association in the GDR's cultural association. As early as 1922 to 1934, additional fee stamps for stamp exchange shipments abroad were referred to as exchange control stamps in the Soviet Union. In the short-lived Far Eastern Republic such stamps were in use in the spring and summer of 1923. The GDR stamps of the same name probably go back to them, but unlike the Soviet variant, they were not subject to a fee.
Source Wikipedia
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I'm cheating a bit, but I've just virtually added this FDC to my collection of Algerian War covers, "virtually" because it's either in Australia or on a slow boat to Canada, and isn't expected to arrive until June!
When the Algerian War between France and Algerian separatists ended in 1962, eight years after it began, Algerian postal officials ordered the production and use of overprinted French stamps, which would eventually be replaced by the first home-grown stamps to be issued by the newly independent country. The overprints were to consist of opaque bars of ink to obliterate the words "REPUBLIC FRANCAISE," and, near the centre of the stamps, the initials "E.A." (the initials of Etat Algerien — Algerian State.
Overprints of that type are not unusual, but in Algeria an interesting departure from standard postal practice occurred: instead of having French stamps overprinted by centralized printing agencies and distributed throughout the country, postmasters were told to create locally-made overprints, presumably from existing stocks of stamps, using rubber stamps or whatever printing technologies they had access to. As a result, it seems that every post office in the country issued its own version of the overprint.
The "E.A." overprints consist of a mind-boggling variety. Some seem to be printed by a letterpress, others with rubber stamps, still others with pens. Some overprints are missing one or both bars. The space between the "E" and the "A" varies widely. Some overprints were under-inked, some over-inked, some inverted. Most were made with devices which included both letters, but some seem to have the letters printed separately. Some overprints are parallel with the top and bottom edges of the stamps while others are at an angle. One example (still in transit from France) includes a hyphen "E.-A." and another is underlined with what appears to be a slanted pen stroke. Most overprints are black, but some are blue and one is in red. The overprint on one pair of stamps is oriented vertically instead of horizontally.
Here are examples of some of overprint types:
I am puzzled by one overprint that includes an accent aigu over the E:
Can someone please enlighten me about the use of that accent?
It seems certain that at least some of the overprints were created exclusively for the philatelic market, which would explain why I haven't encountered them actually used on mail. I have wondered whether forgeries of these stamps exist. It seems almost certain, since some have catalogue values in double digits. On the other hand, Algeria is not the most collectible of countries in the West, probably because of the difficulty that translation entails.
One of the things that interests me about the Algerian War is that its circumstances almost perfectly matched both the First Indochina War and the Vietnam War. Both wars involved insurgents in French Colonies (Algeria and the former French Indochina) who were fighting for independence. Both wars were asymmetrical wars fought by a European army equipped with modern military equipment against insurgents operating largely as guerrillas; the French army made wide use of helicopter borne assaults and medical evacuations, flying Sikorsky UH-34 helicopters, the same helicopters that the Americans used in the Vietnam War. Some of the French troops who fought in the First Indochina War, which ended in 1954 with the fall of the French fortress at Dien Bien Phu, were taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. When survivors were released, some of them were repatriated to France, travelling on the American hospital ship, U.S.S. Haven. No doubt some of those soldiers, many of whom were members of the French Foreign Legion, soon were engaged in combat in Algeria. This postcard was posted by an American crewman on Haven as its approached Marseille with its contingent of former French POWs:
Other commonalities between the Vietnam War and the Algerian War: both the United States and France suffered violent domestic clashes between pro-war Hawks and anti-war Doves, and perpetrated the murder of civilians by government troops.
Bob
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
"Can someone please enlighten me about the use of that accent?"
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Roy said, "The use of the accent is correct."
Which begs the question, are all of the other "E.A." overprints incorrect? I expect that overprints in general aren't expected to be grammatically correct, rather like news headlines that actually are sentences but don't have end punctuation.
Bob
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From "The Holocaust Stamps Project" to me today, on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day, linked to the Warsaw Uprising). Note that the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27th) is tied to the liberation of Auschwitz.
I created this customized cover and my local postal outlet was happy to add the CDS and let me take it with me (instead of putting it into the mail system).
I was invited to a special commemoration event at the Jewish Community Centre tonight (incredibly moving testimonies, readings, and a documentary short-film) where I showed this. Based on the response I think I might do more such customized covers for people on request, going forward.
Dave.
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"I created this customized cover "
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And one from Carcross, Yukon
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Forgive my ignorance, Jules, but what language is that? Looks like cyrillic letters, or perhaps Greek.
Cheers - Neville
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That’s a great way to get cool postmarks Jules!
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
"what language is that? Looks like cyrillic letters, or perhaps Greek."
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Usually in French we do not use accents on uppercase letters. For me the accentued uppercase e (É) looks suspicious and I think it might be a forgery. However, now under the influence of US made (or at least designed) computers, tablets and the likes, it is easy to put accents on capital letters. Best example: look on the first line.
re: Show a cover from your collection ?
Usually in French we do not use accents on uppercase letters. For me the accentued uppercase e (É) looks suspicious and I think it might be a forgery. However, now under the influence of US made (or at least designed) computers, tablets and the likes, it is easy to put accents on capital letters. Best example: look on the first line.
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@Leverage: Thanks for this additional information, but I’m not sure what you are referring to when you write, “…look on the first line.”
Bob
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I meant the first line of my post in which I easily typed É. In a French mechanical typewriter in was impossible a while ago.
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Here's a cover I received the other day. I have a few mourning covers in my New Jersey collection, and my motivation for this one was the Dias Creek cancel, where it's also seen as Dais Creek.
Back in the day before email, or even phones, receiving a black border letter in your mail could ruin your whole day! That was how people learned of relatives or friends passing. While I have a few in my collection, I had never owned one with the letter inside.
It was written on May 8, 1889 and postmarked the next day. Figure the letter was delivered on May 10, and the funeral was the 11th. Local trip in same county.
And here's the same town with the Dais Creek spelling. The John Kay book on New Jersey post office history doesn't mention the spelling change.
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Unless I nave gone blind are they not all spelled DIAS? All four read the same.
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Time to lock this thread and start a second one. Taking a long time to load.
Roy