By Doug Graves> What draws people to stamps? Why do we get a thrill from seeing Mickey Mouse, astronauts, presidents and Americana on these small pieces of affixable paper? One possibility is that they are at once so many things: they’re art, they’re history, they’re antiques, they’re money, they’re miniatures – all wrapped up in the romanticism of the letters they set into motion. Stamp collectors (called philatelists) come in all ages. It’s perhaps the most affordable hobby that is never ending. Make no mistake, some collections are priceless. Two years ago, at the Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries in New York, 103 treasures from the collection of U.S. bond king William H. Gross sold for a shade over $10 million, setting the all-time record for a single day stamp sale. Gross’ block of 1857, 5-cent Jefferson Perforated’s fetched $472,000. Even more astonishing, his 24-cent 1869 Pictorial Inverted Center stamps went for $750,000. Stamp collectors in the early 1900s had a very different set of concerns than do collectors today. A hundred years ago, new stamp issues were few and far between. Post Offices hadn’t yet learned that they could subsidize postal operations by issuing stamps that collectors would buy and put in their collections. Every stamp that a collector buys and never uses is a donation to the Post Office and helps underwrite the cost of postal service. In 1911, for instance, there were no new United States stamp issues. In 2011, a hundred years later, there were sixty different stamp issues with a postage value of over $57. From the onset, collectors scrambled to get the latest single postage stamp, put it in a protective sleeve and mount it in an album using a small hinge. The next rage in this hobby was the plate block. Until the late 1960s, United States stamps included two rows of stamps attached to one another in a block of four or more, with printing information, including the printing plate number, on attached margin paper. A number is used to identify one specific plate or cylinder used to print the stamps. Plate blocks began in the 1890s. By 1910, the hobby of First Day Cover collecting took root. Collectors began to find and esteem older envelopes that were cancelled on the first day that the stamp had been issued. Nothing elaborate were these envelopes. They were just plain and collectors were fascinated at having mailed (and receiving) an envelope with a stamp that was cancelled on the first day that the stamp had been issued. The U.S. Post Office, in a decision that greatly advanced First Day Cover collecting, began to announce upcoming issues in advance. This gave budding First Day Cover collectors time to prepare to buy the news stamps and have them used on the first day of issue. “First Day Covers could still only be told by the date of the cancellation on the envelope. It wasn’t until 1923 that the first envelope cachet, indicating that the cover is a First Day Cover, that First Day Cover collecting entered the modern phase,” says Steven Mays, whose First Day Cover collection numbers just more than 4,000. He has 36 albums full of these covers, others he keeps in sturdy, protected boxes. Mays, 74, a resident of Vienna, Virginia just outside Washington D.C., concentrates on First Day Covers of Great Britain and Canada, as well as the United States. He grew up in Vienna and has made multiple trips to The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington D.C. “The Smithsonian National Postal Museum has it all, like a comprehensive specialized collection of 19th Century carrier and local stamps, Confederate stamps (1861-1865), Tax stamps, hand stamps, Pony Express saddle bags, Sea Post service bags as early as 1845 and letterboxes as early as 1900,” Mays said. “The museum has it all and there are many aspects to this fun and lucrative hobby, but the most colorful and most popular these days are the First Day Covers.” The first cachet was on the 1923 Harding memorial issue that was released for the recently deceased President Warren Harding. The famous Harding cachet was designed and issued by George Linn, who was the publisher of the famous Linn’s Stamp News magazine, which is still the mainstay philatelic publication today. Throughout the 1920s and for most of the rest of the last century, First Day Cover collecting continued to gain in popularity and the older First Day Covers shot up in price. Interest was increasingly on the cachets (the printed portion of the envelope design that complimented the philatelic issue that was commemorating some aspect of American History.) “By 1940, most U.S. collectors collected First Day Covers as part of their U.S. collection, I know I did,” Mays said. “Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, First Day Cover collecting became more cachet colleting than anything else. By the 1970s, there were scores of cachet makers creating these cachets, some in black and white so as not to distract from the beauty of the stamp itself. Many companies got into the act of producing cachets.” Indeed. Favorite cachet makers sought by collectors include ArtCraft, Artmaster, Fleetwood, House of Farnam and Colorano. Because no cachet had official U.S. Post Office authorization, collectors were often puzzled as to which cachet to collect. Again, a cachet is an informative illustration usually on the left-hand side of an envelope or postcard. The cachet is designed to be attractive, educational, or humorous and supports the stamp by usually giving a little information about the featured stamp. For example, a 2003 stamp featuring the American Purple Heart Award had an accompanying postcard with an illustrated cachet showing three soldiers carrying a fourth wounded comrade. “The slow end of the U.S. First Day Cover collecting began around 1975 with the entry of both the Franklin Mint and Reader’s Digest into the monthly First Day Cover market,” Mays said. “Both companies operated a monthly service that sent numerous First Day Covers to subscribers. The prices were high, as much as $15 per cover that had a 13-cent or 15-cent stamp affixed at that time, along with a 5-cent envelope. At the time, casual collectors never realized they were buying souvenirs, not just collectibles.” At first, collectors were required to send in the covers before the stamp was actually issued. Those rules were later relaxed so that today for most stamps, collectors have 60 days after the date of issue in which to submit their requests. However, those covers must bear the stamp(s) to which the ’First Day of Issue’ cancel is to be applied. By 2000, the philatelic First Day Cover marketers were largely gone, having left millions of collectors with hundreds of millions of dollars cost in material that was very overpriced, undesirable, and not collected by modern philatelists. But collectors like May looks at it from a very different perspective. “The fact that many collectors are bailing from the hobby of First Day Covers is a blessing to me and others who continue collecting,” Mays said. “It was said that the baseball card collecting hobby, for example, became inundated with card companies who produced their own cards. This occurred around 2000 as hoards of card manufacturers made the scent. |