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Once a decade or so, whether it needs it or not, I clean up my home office. One of the major discoveries this year was that the carpeting in it is blue. Who knew?
But I also found some interesting first day covers I'd forgotten I had. Here are some of them: This is one of the classic FDCs: The 1934 souvenir sheet the U.S. Post Office Department issued to honor the American Philatelic Society convention. This Ioor cover measures 7 by 4 inches, and the cachet is Mellone #15.
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This Popcorn Wagon FDC is a classic UO, or unofficial-city first day cover. The stamp was issued July 7, 1988, in Chicago. Cornland is a 187-mile drive. The printing on the envelope is generic for the 1988 Transportation Coil Series stamps, but the photo of the Model "T" Popcorn Car is pasted on. It's signed with an oval "George Turner" rubber stamp on the back.
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Here's another classic UO: The Celebrate the Century stamp shows the iconic Rosie the Riveter poster from World War II, celebrating the women workers who filled in for the men who were away at war. The 1940s sheet in this series was issued at Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia. Factoryville, PA, is about 850 miles away. It's a GAMM Cachet, and Gerry Adlman (the "GA" in GAMM) was an amazing UO servicer. Did she drive the 14 hours, or arrange to have the stamps flown to Factoryville, which is near Scranton?
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Look closely at the stamp on this ArtCraft FDC: It's really two halves of two stamps, what the collect who serviced them called a "bisect." (It's so labeled on the glassine envelope.) A bisect was when a mailer in the 19th century could cut a stamp in half so it would pay the postage for half the denomination of the stamp. On this cover, the upper right half is Sc. 1310, the single stamp issued for SIPEX. The lower left is the stamp portion of the SIPEX souvenir sheet, Sc. 1311. I have it with both this black cachet and the same design printed in blue.
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There was a discussion on the VSC message board recently about Butler & Kelley folders. Here's one for the 1962 Dag Hammarskjold stamp, Sc. 1203. The inside also has text, but there's nothing on the back and nothing to indicate that B&K produced this. It measures 4¼ by 6½ inches.
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This one for 1993's Garden Flowers is a mystery to me: I don't know who produced it. It's a hand-assembled envelope. The flower design continues on the back, but there's nothing to indicate who put it together. Anyone want to claim authorship?
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This 4- by 4-inch card was included free with Frank Sinatra "Nothing But The Best" CD, which was released on the stamp's first day of issue in 2008. You can read about it in our message board.
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Lloyd A. de Vries
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