Wonderful Air Cover

As atonement for misidentifying something earlier, here's a wonderful AIR Cover I found. Don't know if I like it more for the cancellation or ?? you tell me.

Ok, I will tell you..you like the "whole package" !

i picked this up at a flea market on the Cape this past weekend ! I should be able to get a good trade for it !

Does anyone know about the football shaped cancel ? I've got a lot of those it seems. Still waiting on my book.

Wow, that cover looks awesome!

Spent a little time searching archives and found an old thread which is very informative about the football shaped cancels. Answered my own question. :)

Glad you like the cover.

Those cancels are called Duplex Postmarks - a form of handstamp cancel. There's two major types - the barrel duplex like you have above. They usually have a number or letter in the oval that refers to a clerk or a canceling station. The other is the ovate bar duplex which has a simplier oval shaved bard grid to the right. They were issued to smaller post offices.
Will

Wonderful indeed! US Airmail stamps were really cool back then.

It is a nice, clean and well struck cover. I like it and so should you. It's a nice addition to any cover collection.

First ship to fire in anger in WW1
May have sank an underseaboaten.

I just love these threads.

They start out harmless enough and by GOOSHNESS, you end up learning a lot.

Thanks to everyone and I think an important point is to look at ALL THE THREADS because there are nuggets of information hidden everywhere!

I'm with you there,
You never know where you are going to end up.





Pacific Mail SS Co.

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was founded in 1848 by William Aspinwall of the firm of Howland and Aspinwall to execute a contract to carry mail from the Isthmus of Panama to the newly-annexed territory of California. Fortuitously for Aspinwall and his fellow investors, Pacific Mail was ideally positioned to cash in on the Gold Rush of 1849. As a result of this and the high quality of its service, the company became both an important part of the history of the American West as well as one of the most profitable enterprises of its era, with an annual return on investment that ran as high as 30%. Within five years of its inception, the company was running 18 steamers and it peaked at 23 in 1869. In that year, however, the completion of the transcontinental railroad foretold the end of the high profits of the Panama-California route. PMSS also neglected to keep up to date technologically and began to suffer from competition from other companies, especially the Occidental and Oriental SS Company. For a time, the line survived on subsidized mail contracts to Australia and New Zealand, but when it lost those it was soon forced to accept a takeover by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1893. In 1912, Congress banned ships owned by railroads from using the Panama Canal, so Southern Pacific sold PMSS to the Grace Line, which operated it as a subsidiary under its traditional house flag from 1916-25. It was then taken over by Robert Dollar & Co., which merged PMSS into its own operation, although it, too, continued to use the old name and flag on occasion. With the government bail-out of the Dollar Line in 1938, ownership passed to American President Lines, but by this time PMSS essentially existed only on paper. It was formally closed down in 1949 after just over a century of existence.

http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/l...ificmail.htm