US Army Covers From 2ww And Few Others From The Same Period

I made a error with uploading the 2nd portion of the photos, named the same as the 1st one, and the 2nd overwrited now photos from the 1st :(

But, I believe that this 2nd portion down is more interested than the 1st one.

Filipo,
Welcome to the forum.
The first 2 are air mail postal envelopes Scotts UC3, UC4, UC5 or UC6 depending on the die. they are APO usage. The first has a nice army censor handstamp. Third is a 1 cent postal envelope with additional postage added to pay the 3 cent first class rate. The forth is a 2 cent rate postal meter. The next one is a domestic usage air mail paying the 8 cent rate. Sixth is postal reply card. Seventh is a domestic postal card. and the last one is a perforated initials (perfin) which is normally use on commercial cover but appear that it my be a domestic use. I am not familar with this perfin. Some are rare and command a good price. I will try to find out about this one.
With the possible exception of the perfin, these are pretty common items of relatively low catalog value. If I find anything on the perfin I will post it here.

Thank you very much, Russ, I will appreciate that.

I got one idea, but it could be just silly... Perfin is a abbreviation for "Perforated Initials", which means PI. X is for Christmas. It is visible on the cover that is from the Christmas period... So, maybe PXI means Perforate Christmas Initials? Probably not, but I like to calculate :)


I have few hundred of covers, but these ones looks the most interested to me... but, I am just amateur, at all.

I will have two questions... does covers from the WWII with a handwritten note "free" on the place of the stamp (without stamp) and just a usual cancellation are the interested ones?

I also have and some covers sent by members of the US House of the Representative, also without stamps, but with handwritten "free" or something similar, from the late XIX century. Is that could be interesting?

Thank you so much once again!

The perfins were actually a anti-theft marking used by companies. With the holes punched in them it discouraged employees from stealing them. The WWII free are common. The free franking from the U.S. House of Representatives could contain some very interesting covers. Some of these could be valuable.

OK, in that case this "pXi" probably doesn't means what I thought previously. I will be thankful if you find something about it, to share here with us.

I will take a look into the HOR covers, and I will scan them and place photos here!

Thank you so much again!

Welcome!
The Army Post office (A.P.O.) 969 is from Hawaii - fairly common. APO 124 was used in a few places in Europe, but it may have been used in Germany since it's a later date and would make it a better cover. The APO address was also used in England, Netherlands and Belgium. You would have to research some military history to see where that unit was located on August 11th 1945.
Will

Thank you, Will!

Russ,

here I have some "political" covers from the late XIX and early XX century... from the members of the US House of Representatives, Secretary of the Navy, US Senate, War Department etc.

One of the Secretary of the Navy is sent directly by himself, Secretary of that time, Edwin Denby... although I don't believe that it could be of a major philately interests :)

I scanned both sides of some covers, because they are cancelled on the both sides.

I also added some postcards... I know that they are not interesting, but they just fallen in my hands, so I scanned them, too!

Filipo,
Some really interesting covers. Robert Gordon Cousins (1-31-1859 to 6-30-1933)was a congressman from Iowa from 1893-1909. Letter 2 and 3 are from Thomas Brackett Reed (10-18-1839 to 12-7-1902) conressman from Maine (Portland) from 1877-1899, Speaker of the House 1889-1891 and 1895-1899. Reed sought the Republican nomination for president in 1896. The third letter was while he was speaker.

Letter no. 6 Navy Department from Admiral Charles McVay is interesting. Admiral McVay's son, Rear Admiral Charles McVay II was the commander of the USS Indianapolis. This is the ship that carried the first atomic weapon to Tinian. From there he was to sail to the Philippines. In route the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Due to confusion by the U.S. Navy, a search was not immediately organized. This resulted in a horrible loss of life to the crew of the Indianapolis.

There are 3 letters from William Boyd Allison (3-2-1829 to 8-4-1908) Congressman from Iowa 1865-1873, Senator 1873-1908. Allison also served in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was offered the position of Secretary of Treasury twice by Presidents Harrison and Arthur. McKinley Offered the Sec. of State position. He decline all 3. In 1896 he also sought the nomination for president.

Very historic items here. Do any of them have the letters? Really nice collection of some significant historical U.S. politicians.
Thanks for sharing.

Edit Reed and Allison lost the nomination to William McKinley who was assassinated at the Pan American Expo in Buffalo, New York. He was shot on Sept 5, 1901 and died from gangrene on Sep 14, 1901.

I have a extensive archive of personal papers by Robert Gordon Cousins. Over one hundred letters received from most promiment politician of that time, and also some famous writers and other notable people. All covers I showed here have a letters in them. There is also a lot of original handwritten speaches by Mr. Cousins, his personal notebooks (written in shorthand, so I didn't read them), his personal poetry, handwritten draft for pamphlets etc. He also was a lecturer in Chautauqua, so there is also his original contract and magazines representing him in that position.

However, I was quite sure that nobody is interested in all of that stuff, so I, at least, wanted to show covers of the letters here, where some enthusiast could be glad to see them.

Does this covers has some postal history value also, or they are just interesting because the writers are notable?

I just found another letter with semi-imperforated stamp... Could it be rare, or that kind of imperforations were usual for that times? Letter is from 1930.

Thank you very much for your friendly answers!

filipo,
The main value is in the historical significance. I don't see any rare stamps or cards. The last stamp posted is a coil stamp. They are issued in rolls of typically 500-3,000.

Russ, when you mentioned a tragic death of President McKinley, I remind myself about a strange letter which appeared in Robert G. Cousins' correspondence. It looks like some kind of threat, and it is scary a bit. It seems that Mr. Cousins tried to burn it, but he didn't finish his job. I don't know why, but maybe this could have some connection with President McKinley death, who died a year later. Here is the envelope and the content.

Other bunch of scans are letter from the one of the envelopes which I showed to you earlier, the one written by Admiral McVay. You will see that content is very interesting, and maybe prophetic in some way!

Have a enjoy for yourself now, because you help me with covers... These letters probably nobody didn't read for a many of years!

Cheers!

Russ, is this also a coil stamp? It is perforated on 3 sides, but only on one horizontal (downside) it didn't.



Also, do you know some forum where people will be more glad to see these antiqe US political memorabilia? I will be glad to scan and show as much as I can, by it seems that on this topic (and forum) it will be kinda offtopic...

Did you maybe find something about the perfin which I uploaded here first?

Nothing yet on the perfin. The stamp shown was issued starting in 1894. There are several possible cat numbers. There are 3 different types of triangles in the ccorners and one change that is most noticable in the hair. They were also printed on both unwatermarked and watermarked paper. It is definitely the carmine color. They are all pretty common. The straight edge on the bottom was from cutting the sheet into 4 panes. Each sheet will produce 72 stamps with one side (top, bottom, left, right) straigh and 4 stamps with 2 ajoining side straight.
I think the people on this forum have very diverse interests and many would probably enjoy.

Hi filipo, welcome!

I have been following this thread and reading with interest all posts.

Thank you for posting here.

I myself do not collect US stamps or covers but that is not to say that some day I will decide to in some way.

i did when I was younger and after selling all of my stamps I am starting out again on slightly different paths after many years.

Reading on SCF here is a great thing because I can read and be exposed to many other types of stamp collecting than those I am currently doing. This is a good thing. I have actually started to collect items that I had not known about before and am anticipating collecting even more, but only after I have read and learned about it on here.

Knowledge is the key to success, is the motto above, and knowledge is also the key to making choices. There is many times knowledge and understanding that can be learned from one area of collecting that can be transferred to an another area of collecting.

Also, sometimes people here are away for business or personal reasons and cannot contribute. Sometimes you get a lot of answers, sometimes a few.

Please keep posting here. I for one enjoy your posts.

Nice stuff Filipo...just going through my cover boxes I found this one from a Marine in 1944...

Hello Puzzler and PhilB, thank you very much for the welcome! Phil, thank you also for the nice cover added to this topic!

Russ, thank you very much again for sharing your knowledge!

I scan for today probably usually stuff for the collectors, but interesting to me.

I found interesting that this stamp here is 5 different variations of blue color... However, I am 30% color blind (by Daltonism), and there is probably more variations, which are not visible to me... But, are these 5 ones all usual? The third one (the most light-blue) is a coil, and other are perforated on 1,2 or all 4 sides.



Here are 2 Canal Zone covers



Russ, I took a look into the greeting card in "perfin" envelope, so it seems that it is sent by some company named: "Hudson&French"???



3 different Jefferson's postal cards... Is the 3rd one brown color? (my color blindness :()

How I can found a watermark on a postal card? Are they easy visible or need some special instrument to find them out?



Again some variations... 1st and 2nd are wrongly centered(?) and 4th is much "blurred" than 1st? Are that we can call errors, or that are just a usual imperfections?



And, at least, I found this stamp glued in one old journal from the late 19th century (1898. or 1899.) It is obviously didn't post used, but could it be some kind of local stamp or something similar? I suppose that it is a personal photo printed as a stamp, but some real stamps have a very strange stories, so maybe some could be behind this one also?