Prince Charles/Lady Diana FDCs

[belti]

Hi

I was sorting some stuff in my collection and I came across quite a good number of FDCs all commemorating the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. I think there are approx 50+ covers from various commonwealth countries.  The thing that got me interested is that these covers are all addressed to the same person and the address is typed not hand written.

How easy/difficult could have been at the time to obtain all these FDCs from such a diversification of countries across all continents. 

Countries include: Aituaki, Anguilla, Antigua, Australia, Brunier, Bermuda, Congo, Kiribati, Grenada, Jamaica, Isle of Man, Jersey, Ivory Coast, Mali, St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Great Britain, Kenya, Seychelles, Tuvalu, Tristan da Cunha, Dominica, Uganda, Cameroun, Guernsey, Togo, Turks & Caicos Islands, Niue, Cook Islands, Penhryn etc.

Thanks a lot for any feedback.

Regards

[Deleted]

Are they all plain envelopes, local official FDCs or are the FDCs from one supplier such as Buckingham or Benham?
They may also have been offered by the agency that was responsible for the omnibus, such as the CASB.

[khj]

Sounds like a nice group of FDCs. I have a number of the omnibus series as souvenir sheets.

If the address is printed in a stylized font (not the usual typewriter pica/elite), it's almost certainly through a single supplier/agency. You can also typically tell by checking the envelope corners/back or cachet (often has the supplier/cachetmaker name somewhere). These were often sold by subscription, and included a free pre-printed binder that named/housed the collection.

If they are agent produced covers, the not-so-secret fact is that many times the FDCs were actually all produced at one location, rather than serviced in each individual country. Please post some pics!

k

[belti]

Hi

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

Please find below some images as requested.

Regards

[belti]

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[khj]

The FDC style, especially the address font, gives it away -- Postal Commemorative Society. Somewhere along the line, a seller probably tossed the album binder to reduce shipping costs. These covers were originally inserted on cardstock album pages which contained additional information. The pages had rounded slits cut into them so the corners or edges of the covers could be inserted, giving the appearance of a rectangular frame with rounded corners. It's not unusual for some dealers to take the FDCs out and toss the pages to reduced space & shipping costs. I know I used to do that. Now, I scan the pages before I recycle them.

This particular PCS collection was a bit unusual, in that the album came with protective sleeves (not particularly good quality) for each album page. In most PCS collections, the album pages are punched and directly put into the rings of the album binder.

I believe the entire set had 72 covers, but don't hold me to that, as I'm not sure how long the actual subscription ran. Even though they were basically all issued in the same 1-2 month period, PCS would send them to you a handful at a time.

As a subscriber, you did have the option to receive unaddressed covers. But since most subscribers weren't actually stamp collectors, but wanted them for thematic, keepsakes, heirloom... purposes, most collections I've seen are addressed. When I got my free trial subscriptions, I always asked for unaddressed covers (the first one they initially sent you as a free sample was almost always addressed).

k (alas, k no longer collects FDCs)

[khj]

There were numerous other collections produced and sold, as this was a highly commercialized event. Other collection publishers/distributors included Sumner, Fleetwood, Royal Mint... as well as the ones @salmantino mentioned.

But yours are definitely PCS.

Here is an example of the album binder that I "borrowed" from the internet:


And sample pages in the protective sleeve:


Alas, so many philatelic items, so little space.

k

[belti]

Hi

Thanks a lot for the info and thorough explanation.

By any chance do you know if such albums have space for one cover per country only? For some of the countries, I have two envelopes as they either issued more than 1 set or they issued a souvenir sheet as well.

Once again thank you.

Regards

[khj]

I've seen separate FDCs for sheet stamps and the S/S, but don't remember specifics for PCS. If the address font is the same, then they will be part of the PCS collection.

The album is free-form -- just transparent sheet protectors. So you can insert/sequence the individual album pages as you please. Most collections I've seen had 2 album pages per sheet protector, each facing outward as the album pages were 1-sided.

However, I think some of the album pages were actually extended to 2 pages because of the additional descriptions/text. On those, there is a text-only album page on the left side (backside of preceding sheet protector) and then a cover+text album page on the frontside of the sheet protector on the right side. That's from memory, so don't hold me to that. There's a possibility that I might be thinking of a collection from another publisher.

[belti]

Thanks a lot for the update, I very much appreciate the info provided