Lou Hebert who has been reporting and writing broadcast news in the Toledo area for four decades sent me information recently that he authored a story on the adventurous life and tragic demise of Owney the Postal Dog. I’m sure you will find his story of interest.
Click here for his article…

If you have an article on postal history that you would like to share with other collectors I would be glad to post it for you.

Colonists brought the European tradition to American, but the stateside love affair with mailing hearts-and-flowers sentiments didn’t really get under way until the mid-19th Century. The reason: it was a good deal.
 
Exasperated after a generation of spoils system incompetence and on the heels of a U.S. Postal Commission Report, Congress ordered a massive review of the Post Office and passed comprehensive reform legislation in 1845 to overhaul procedures. The legislators voted in a drop in rates and when February 14th rolled around, the penny-wise cost of sending a card set off what contemporaries of the time described as “Valentine mania.”
 
People sent cards to numerous objects of their affection, often taking advantage of the possibilities for anonymity that the mail provided. That was alarming to moralists who complained that the postal system, in general, “promoted promiscuity, illicit assignations, and the distribution of pornography.”
 
And actually, they weren’t entirely wrong about any of that!
 
The Valentine’s Day tradition really took hold during the Civil War years, 1861-1865, when cards often depicted sweethearts parting, or a tent with flaps that opened to reveal a soldier. (These popular cards were known as “windows.”)
 
By the time the craze tapered off a few decades later, people were sending each other cards for Christmas, Easter, and on their birthdays, as the holiday greeting cards became a fixture of American postal history
 

A decade later, Americans were buying and sending three million ready-made valentines. Today, approximately 190 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged each year.

  The user of patriotic-theme envelopes could, depending on the design he chose to mail, express a wide variety of sentiments. This surely appealed to the average citizen during this turbulent period, and the practice spread widely and quickly, creating a great demand for the designs, in turn causing many publishers to enter into the growing field.  The result is a facinating collecting field, wrought with colorful and often emotional designs, concentrated in a brief period in our history. No other field of U.S. cover collecting offers as many different design possibilities concentrated into such a short period.

  Our records indicate that at least 200 different publishers and printers produced patriotic designs. Special albums could be bought during the war in which to mount the envelopes. Today these albums are $500/1,000. items. The collecting of Civil War Patriotics actually began during the war, and one design actually promotes the collecting of the covers! It is said that some publishers continued printing and selling covers after the war ended, but rumors of modern production of these designs are, in my opinion, mostly unfounded. I am of the opinion that 95% or more of the patriotic covers that exist today were printed between 1861-65.  Indeed, some modern fakes exist, but not in any sufficient amount to yet create alarm in the collecting community.  It is claimed that over 10,000 different designs exist, but I have concluded based on my studies that it is probably more like 7,500, as designs that I have not seen before, in 35 years of watching,  rarely come into the marketplace. The collecting of CWPs is popular and the prices being currently paid on eBay, and elsewhere, are at record levels.

SUBJECTS;

  A wide variety of subjects were used on envelopes to inspire patriotic sentiment, etc.  Included in these are; Famous People (military and non-Military), Scenes (Battles, Non-Battle, Specific  locations), Army Corps and Regiments, State-related designs, Caricatures (a wide variety, probably 1,000 different), Eagles, Flags, Soldiers/Males, Liberty/Female, Miscellaneous subjects including Bells, Shields, Poems, Stars, etc.  Designs were predominately printed in red and blue (also to inspire patriotism!) but exist in a wide range of colors, including highly prized handcolor designs produced mostly by Charles Magnus Co. and Kimmell Co. and on envelopes of many different colors (but white is most common).  Some collectors limit their collections to one or two of the subjects of their liking, but most  try to aquire as many different designs as possible.  Those who collect postally used designs may do so by subject too or by the State they live in, or some other criteria of their choosing. Specialized collections have been formed, for example, of only those used to foreign countries, only those used from Kentucky, only Caricatures, etc. As with all areas of collecting, how to do so is a highly personal choice.

VALUES

  Twenty-five years ago, the lowest-priced unused CWPs could be bought for 10c-25c each! Today, the minimum price is roughly $5.00 and range upward to well over $250. for the most desirable subjects (Lincoln, Rose of Washington, etc.) . Postally used designs start at about $10.00 for those in very poor quality with very common designs, and range up to many thousands of dollars. As a young collector I can recall unused CWPs being common enough that we would sometimes use them to mail letters! I doubt many folks would do that today, although several businesses exist that sell envelopes bearing reproduced designs of CWPs for use.

Thanks to Bill Weiss who was kind enough to contribute this article. For more information on Bill Weiss Auctions, books and expertising service see our “Contributors Page”.

Prague Post

Challenging times for esk pota
Prague Post, Czech Republic - 6 hours ago
By Victor Velek Traditional postal service providers are experiencing challenging times. The golden age of mail is gone, killed by the advent of electronic …

The most famous bisected Black Jack stamps are known as “stage cents” bi-sects, and occurred after the Civil War when Southerners would cut 2-Cent stamps vertically in half between the “O” and “S” of the word “POSTAGE” at the top of the stamp. The result was that the wording that was left on the right-hand portion of the stamp would say “STAGE CENTS” – subtly referring to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by the actor John Wilkes Booth. If anyone had any questions, the creator of the bi-sect would simply tell him that he was only intending to use the left-half portion of the stamp, which read “U.S.PO TWO”; and footnoted it saying that he was truly sympathetic towards the causes of the poor and The Union.

Bisects only have philatical value when the cut halves are still affixed on the postal item showing the postmarks and originating from a recognised historical event.

It was love at first flight.

The fact that airmail service was relatively new — and particularly dangerous — appealed to Lindbergh’s daredevil nature. He wrote of the perils of his profession that, “the best way to cope with danger is to keep in contact with it.”

Lindberg loved the challenge of a good competition and was drawn to the Orteig Prize of $25,000 for the first nonstop New York-Paris flight. He was competing with top flyers from around the world, including U.S. Navy Commander Richard Byrd.

In 1927 at age 25, Lindbergh left his competitors in the dust as he crossed the country in 22 hours to arrive in New York on May 12th, before departing again on May 20. He left at 7:54 am from Roosevelt Field on Long Island and arrived at Le Bourget airfield near Paris May 21 at 10:54 pm to a cheering crowd of more than 150,000. Lindbergh’s total flight time was 33 hours, 30 minutes, 29.8 seconds. The pilot had not slept in 55 hours

Lindbergh carried only five covers on his famous 1927 Trans-Atlantic flight and they were for purely promotional purposes. He had declined to take a real mail sack onboard because of concerns about over the effects of extra weight.

Airmail postal history collectors will browse for First flights, Catapults, Zeppelins, Crash covers, Transpacific Airmail and all sorts of Commercial International Airmail.

Military postal history collectors will browse for war covers, APO covers, U.S. naval ship covers mailed by sailors, patriotic covers and other areas that pertain to military history.

There are so many areas to collect in there is just no way I can list all of them here. I haven’t even started on town cancellations, DPO’s, machine cancellations, flag cancellations, cities, states and many more collecting interest.