Philatelic Use? Yes or No?

[clif]

I like collecting covers and have far too many of them. I enjoy the history behind them, the use of interesting stamps, and often the envelope itself is a work of art. 

One of the facets of collecting covers is whether or not the cover and stamp were used 'normally'; as in writing a letter or a bill, putting it into an envelope, and using a 'modern at the time' stamp that pays the correct postage. 

Or is it a 'philatelic' cover' i.e. one that has too much postage, uses older stamps, or is obviously put together for sale as a philatelic item ... i.e. First Day cover etc. 

We all probably have a few that are hard to put into a category and I thought it would be interesting to post them and get an opinion.

here's one ... just pulled this out of a lot of British covers that I purchased some time ago and never even opened. I'm sure I bought them for the Machin covers that were included but some of them look even more interesting. What do you think? Philatelic or not? Either way, it's a terrifically attractive SON cover!

[zepherusbane]

It sure looks like a valid use to me, but I'm not sure what the normal amount of postage was in 1974 in Great Britain or when that specific envelope was first released.

[clif]

Oct 12, 2018 14:53:18 GMT -5 zepherusbane said:

It sure looks like a valid use to me, but I'm not sure what the normal amount of postage was in 1974 in Great Britain or when that specific envelope was first released.

I would tend to agree ... except that there's a bunch of covers in this packet that were mailed to the same guy/place. All with nice stamps and cancels ... 

here's a couple 

[FairyFoot]

Yes, 3p was the postage rate for that date, according to Great Britain Philatelic Society, and the rate went up in June '74.

[mourningdoves]

clif , barring any other evidence, I'd say you can treat these as valid postal usages. They're not quite the same addresses; one is to the Superintendent of Recruitment and one is to the Publicity office. And one is merely to "Mr. Gomm" (anybody else remember Ian Gomm?), who could have been in publicity or in recruitment, or could have been someone else entirely.

Maybe somebody at London Transport saved covers, either for a collection or to donate to a charity or because s/he was a hoarder; who knows? I have quite a number of covers that were addressed to an otherwise obscure machine shop in Massachusetts, and many that were sent from Central American sales reps to a Midwestern (if memory serves me well, which it usually doesn't) auto parts manufacturer.

Those commemorative cancellations are corkers! "Popular with visitors since 1066" handed me my best laugh of the day.

[clif]

trying to fill in some of my Ghana BOB spaces ... came across this cover for sale 

my opinion is that it is definitely philatelic in that it was mailed (remailed?) and has postmarks ~40 years apart

[mourningdoves]

There was a group on Postcrossing that did circular letters. The first recipient would put new stamps and the second recipient's address on it, try to misdirect the postal authorities' attention from the first address, and send it off. I think some of these things would get four or five different countries' stamps on one cover before running out of room. I've never seen one with a 41-year time lag, though.

So maybe it's a semi-philatelic cover? (Hey, is that a new term?) Probably not; the Accra postmark seems awfully neat by Ghanaian standards. (My greatest regret in my collecting life is still letting go of a Ghana mixture with dozens of CDSs.) And I don't see any evidence of an original address. Nor can I imagine an aerogramme surviving two trips through a cancellation machine and not looking like it was run over by a forklift. So I would have to say it's a philatelic cover, and a curious one.

[kacyds]

I see a Ghana stamp with a Accra, Ghana cancellation. Then there is 4 Hong Kong stamps with a Scottsdale, Arizona cancellation. Something doesnt add up here...

[Butterfly]

Looks like philatelic art.

[mourningdoves]

Nov 17, 2018 9:06:40 GMT -5 kacyds said:

I see a Ghana stamp with a Accra, Ghana cancellation. Then there is 4 Hong Kong stamps with a Scottsdale, Arizona cancellation. Something doesnt add up here...

Registered mail from HK, rec'd in Scottsdale, so that part is OK. It's odd that there isn't a Hong Kong postmark on there, unless it is on the back over the envelope seals, which makes sense, though you'd think they'd have done the stamps while they were at it. I don't receive much mail or have many covers from HK (or from East Asia in general), so I can't tell how usual or unusual all this is.

Someone in the Scottsdale post office probably got a laugh out of seeing this mutant and decided to add some home-brew outsider art. A laudable impulse, that. On a more sinister note, maybe the modern-age training took over: "If you see a stamp, cross it out with a ballpoint pen or, better yet, a black marker. If you can't find one, whack it with that round thing that says 'eladsttocS'."

[clif]

interestingly it turns out that there are three (fairly easily obtainable) varieties of the Fire-Crowned Bishop Bird aerogrammes ... along with a number of scarcer (or non-existent) minor varieties.  Information can be found here Ghana aerogrammes

and as I continue to read I see that there are overprints as well ... nice!

1959 with no simulated perforations

1961 with simulated perforations (and a postmark similar to our first example above so probably a FDC)

and there is a third inexpensive 1963 variety with the address line rearranged which I do not have an image for (yet)