A personalized stamp from France,commemorating William Booth,the founder of The Salvation Army,sent from the Fondation de l.Armee du Salut in Paris.This is an example of an organization sponsoring a stamp and using it on their own mail.
Here is a post card mailed in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1943 addressed to a Miss Gertrude Wessel in Berlin. I am wondering if someone (Werner?) might be able to translate the message for me. I am hoping the message might indicate who the writer was and what was said. Many thanks. Don
Not so difficult to decipher,but the translation is tricky: Dear Trude ! Thank you for your lettercard.I had already a presentiment of the bereavement.Dreams ! I told Brigitte about it right away in the morning.Because (!!) I had exactly the same dream the next day, another death occured here in the circle of acquaintances. Otherwise there are no news. I hope you (plural) are on the road to recovery. Warmest greetings to you (singular) and ?? (I cannot read the name), also from Brigitte, Yours Käthe
Thanks, Werner. It appears to be correspondence between friends or family about a death of someone known to both writer and the addressee. Don
From the shoe box album, an APS convention cover with convention poster stamp tied to cover, eventually headed for my Cinderellas on Cover collection. Don
Another personalized stamp from France ,sponsored by a taxi company.It even has the telephone number on the stamp....a good way to promote the business ?
A cover from 2010 sent to the Catholic Relief Agency in Paris with a donation to the Haiti earthquake fund. The stamp is another personalized issue and the cover has a very nice circular datestamp and a pictorial cancellation too.
Here's an interesting and unusual item I received a couple days ago. I purchased a cover on eBay from an on-line seller in a town just north of Oklahoma City. He mailed the cover in this salvaged window envelope and used postage due stamps to pay part of the postage. I have seen regular postage stamps used to pay postage due, but I've never seen postage due stamps used as regular postage. It probably went though the mail stream because there are few humans handling the mail these days. A clerk picks it up from a drop box but they don't really pay any attention to it. The a carrier delivers it, but again they don't care about stamps and cancellations. So, if there is at least one stamp on the cover that has photo sensitive ink it will go through the machine canceler and receive a post mark, as this one did. I am going to keep it and put it in my Covers collection as an oddity. Don
The stamp dealers have been good to me by using interesting franking to mail my purchases. This is another cover I just received sending me one of my recent purchases. Note the inverted Jennys on the far right. At first glance I thought they were the $2 reprints, then I saw the 24 cents values. When looking at them closely, it is easy to see they are copies. The color is not quite right and the perforations are not real, i.e. photographs or photocopies of holes. It looks like these items were copied from a photograph of U.S. C-3, either by scanning or photocopy. My plan is to keep them as a cinderella, but how is the question. Should I leave them on cover? They are postmarked with the same cancel as the genuine stamps. Or should I trim them off the cover, soak them off the paper and then mount them for inclusion in my cinderella album? Leaving them on cover appeals to me because of the postmarks. It appears that the dealer who mailed this cover handed it to a postal clerk and asked for a hand cancel. Their values, however, are not included in the total postage cost to mail the envelope. The problem with leaving them on cover is the size of the envelope. It is a #12 envelope and will not fit easily onto an album page. Not impossible, just a little close to the page margins. So, I'm seeking advice -- leave them on cover, or trim them off and soak them? Don
In 1928 the U.S. Post Office Department officially approved the use of specially designated airmail envelopes. This approval included the still familiar red, white and blue markings, either strips, or parallelograms on envelopes to facilitate recognition of air mail. Eleven years later in 1939, the POD issued another approval of a specially marked envelope for special delivery mail (see The Postal Bulletin copied below). The airmail markings were widely accepted and the variations used, especially by the philatelic community, were multitudinous. The special markings for special delivery envelopes, not so much. Philatelic usage of these covers is, perhaps, the easiest to find, although non-philatelic usage is available with some searching. These special delivery markings, however, never achieved the wide-spread use that the airmail markings did. While not mandatory, if the special envelope was used, the appropriate letter rate and special delivery postage had to be applied. The cover I have posted below is correctly rated, i.e. 3c for a domestic surface one ounce letter, plus 10c special delivery fee. Don
Here is an unusual item from my shoe box album. I don't remember from where or when I acquired this item, but it looks like something I found in a dealer's junk box at a stamp show. The stamps are not printed on the envelope, but rather appear to be a cutout from a larger sheet of printed stamps and pasted on the envelope front and back. I'm not sure how to categorize it, maybe under "Personal Covers." It looks philatelic in nature, from one stamp collector to another. Don
Here's another cover from the shoe box album. I remember very little about this cover, how or where I acquired it, but looking at it I believe I bought it for my philatelic publications collection. Given the clearly struck commemorative cancel and the lack of return address, I suspect it may have been a favor hand back cancel, or maybe a gift from the publisher to subscribers. Anglobob, you have a good knowledge of French philatelic items. Any ideas on the background of this cancel and cover? Are you, or others, familiar with Le Monde des Philatelistes? I am assuming it is a philatelic newspaper or magazine. Is that a correct assumption? Don
Don... The stamp on the cover was issued on May19,1964 ,as part of a series showing coat of arms of different French towns and cities.The town of Agen is represented here.Agen is situated in the southwest of France,close to Bordeaux. The cancellation is from St Junien,situated in the central region of France.I can,t clearly make out the date but I dont think it is the first day of issue.More likely a pictorial cancellation to celebrate a fair or exhibition.St Junien is also a popular tourist centre so it could also be used over a certain time period to promote tourism. I am not familiar with Le Monde des Philatelistes at all.
Thanks for the information Bob. The postmark is December 2, 1964. So, the cover is not a first day, but seems to be a special issue of some kind. There is a number, 927, on the reverse. I did find a reference to Le Monde. It is, indeed, a periodical and it looks like the there is an online archive of the paper, later a magazine, from 1951 - 2000. My French is not great, but I interpret the following statement to read that it ceased publishing in 2000 and merged with Timbroscoie to become Timbres Magazine. (Créée le 13 Octobre 1951, cette revue a fusionné en avril 2000 avec Timbroscopie pour donner Timbres Magazine). When I get a little more time I'm going to look at the issues for December 1964 to see if there is a reference to this cover. Here's a link if you are a French reader: It looks like there are several digitized publications available on this site. http://docs.philateliques.free.fr/lmp1/index.php Don
Commemorating the dedication of a new post office, this cover is collected for its John Coulthard cartoon-like cachet depicting an overloaded, but cheerful mailman. Coulthard was a commercial artist and a Modesto resident. He drew many cachets in the 1930s and 1940s, but his best always incorporated cartoon-like characters such as this one. This cover is also collectible of its association value. Al Burns, the addressee, was the long-time editor of Weekly Stamp Gossip, a popular midwestern stamp magazine of the 1920s-1950s. Don
I received this cover today from Monaco.Nice,clear circular cancellations also.It was sent as registered mail and there is a nice label on the back ,showing the Royal Palace of Monaco. A word of praise also for the mail service here in Ecuador...it took less than a month to arrive !! Amazing considering I am still waiting for items sent in February.
Bob, interesting cover ! I think not so long ago you showed a recent cover from France. That,as the cover from Monaco,was franked with stamps from the Franc-periode.Obviously Franc-stamps are still valid in both countries.Is this to be going on indefinitely ? And how is it done ? Is there a simplified Franc versus Euro rate ? Werner
Werner... Stamps from the New Franc period can still be used for postage at a fixed rate of approximately 6.6 to the Euro.Have no idea how long this will last.Belgium also allows you to use pre Euro stamps..I think each European country has different policies. I receive a lot of mail from France with these older stamps,although I would prefer to see current issues.And any stamp is better than those horrible labels !!!
