US POSTAL HISTORY BLOG

In 1693, the first notice of an ‘official’ postal service for the colonies was issued and the first colonial post office was born.   The General Court of Massachusetts mandated that Richard Fairbanks’ tavern in Boston was the designated repository of mail brought from or sent overseas.  It was not unusual to use an existing business as a mail drop.  In England and other international locations, it was common to use coffee houses and taverns as makeshift post offices.

When stocks of a certain stamp ran out, postmasters sometimes resorted to cutting higher denominated stamps in half, vertically or diagonally, thus obtaining two “stamps” each representing half of the original monetary value, or “face” value, of the uncut stamp. The general public could only resort to this practice if authorized by the local postal authorities and for a limited period only.

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.

I would say it refers to a branch of collecting such items as envelopes, postcards, and wrappers with postage affixed, sold by post offices around the world. Some people collect by countries, states, cities, post offices, cancellations, events, and the list goes on and on. Cover collecting is a wide open field and an extension of stamp collecting. A “cover” is an envelope that has seen postal service. Many have “cachets,” a rubber stamped or printed impression or label placed on the cover descriptive of the event for which it was mailed.

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.