Here's a cover I recently acquired for my New Jersey postmark collection. Commercial usage of a commemorative stamp, along with two different seals. This was 1953 so Polio was still a threat. And the Elks seal on the back is a sign of those times too... we'd never say "Crippled Children" today.
"added these two Postcards to my Christmas seal collection from 1915 and 1921"
I've been putting Christmas covers aside. Both those with Christmas seals and those with Christmas Eve and Day cancels. I have been looking for the first seals in 1907, 1908 and 1909 on cover with my Ben Franklin stamp. I've seen many with the seal off to the left but I want ones that are officially tied with the cancellation.
Control stamp from the sales Department of the American Philatelic Association followed by a very nice Great Britain Dealer advertising label served up in a Miniature Sheet. The firm was not known by me.
Do not recall the Kingston dealers but remember the one at top of Wimbledon Hill, near the common. Cannot recall the name but it was in the early 1960's. Seem to remember that there was a collectors shop down at South Wimbledon who sold stamps and matchbox labels, next to an electrical ( radio ham) store.
I was only a wee lad in the early sixties! Wimbledon and stamps were an age away. Found nothing in a search either, sadly.
Here is another item or 2 that have recently landed on my desk.
Commemorative label celebrating 75 years of Postmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Nicely engraved, the building has not changed much since 1906. Issued in booklets of which there are a number of text and printing varieties. A fine souvenir.
Christmas Seal and Charity Stamp Society has been tracking tied seals for a while now. We have a census of tied seals, starting with the 1907. There are no comparable censuses for other seals that I'm aware of.
it's quite a treat to see an Elks and Sister Kinney seal on the same cover; those double seal covers are on the rare side; rarer still if tied.
nice
David
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
Once, I suppose, it was only Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg. Then, gradually, other stories began to surface: Chiune Sugihara, Aristides des Sousa Mendes, Giorgio Perlasca. They're all on stamps worth looking for, and here's another couple, just arrived:
Gilberto Bosques Saldivar - well, check out his story... what a man!
It is a survivor of the 1954 collision of a Trans-Canada Airlines North Star airliner with an RCAF Harvard trainer over the city of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. There were no survivors, and one woman on the ground was killed by falling debris. My web page, North Star Falling, provides extensive details about the circumstances of the collision and the aftermath; at the time, it was the worst airline disaster in Canadian history. The web page includes a lot of philatelic information about the handling of the mail that the North Star was carrying when it crashed.
A Vancouver resident, Chuck Hamilton, found my web page and sent images of his crash cover to me, thinking, correctly, I would be interested. He wasn't interested in selling it to me for obvious reasons: His mother had posted it to his aunt, and it contained photographs of his sister, who died a few years ago from brain cancer. He hadn't known about the photographs until last year when his mother sent them and the cover and letter to him.
The inclusion of the multiple polio labels is interesting. Mr. Hamilton didn't mention whether anyone in his family had polio, but his mother might have, hence the heavy use of the labels. At the time, thousands of people were contracting polio. I'm sure that many Stamporama members remember getting the first vaccine in cubes of sugar.
The North Star was a Canadian variant of the Douglas DC-6. It used the same engines — Rolls-Royce Merlins that were used on the Lancaster bomber and Spitfire fighter of the Second World War. I recently purchased this 1/400 scale diecast model of TCA Northstar, registered as CF-TFB:
The same North Star, CF-TFB, is pictured on Canada Scott #313, issued in the Stamp Centenary set in 1951:
Here's a detail image, showing the registration, TFB:
I know of philatelists whose collections are entirely virtual, which allows them to "own" almost any stamp they can find an image of. But I get a lot of pleasure out having stamps and covers and collateral items in my hands (or grasped by my tongs, so nearly all of the philatelic items illustrated in my web pages are also in my albums and stock books. Nevertheless, I was pleased to add Mr. Hamilton's cover and its contents to my North Star Falling web page, partly because of that green postal inspector's stamp (I have several Moose Jaw crash covers, but I'd never seen one in green ink) but also because of the interesting back story that Mr. Hamilton provided.
During February and March 1933, Hungarian Pilots Antal Banhidi and Tibor Bisits made the first circular flight around the Meditteranean Sea. It took just over 100 hours of flying time to complete which included an 'illegal' tour over the Pyramids of Giza ! The Gerle.13 Bi-plane was designed by Banhidi himself and was one of 15 Gerle light aircraft designed by him.
Shown below are some items won at auction, at least the ones I managed to win. A couple did get away !
Commemorative label produced for the occasion Perforated; Imperf Tete-Beche pair; Imperf Vertically and Progressive Proof in Black only. Designer/Printer not found up to now but research is marked down as ongoing.