Big Lot Of Covers From 1900-03 Recently Picked Up

Oh wow, what a find! Your post immediately caught my eye because I'm a proud Islander - born & bred in Grand Island, NE.

You found the RPO Covers! now which has the highest value?

I havent the slightest clue on Values for cancels LoL

cgcoins who sets the value the buyer or the seller ?

Always the Buyer. Anything is only worth what some one would pay for it.

amen cg, when I put up covers on ebay, I put a price on it but almost always entertrain a best offer.

Back to one of the original scans, there was a cover with the return address from the Hotel Orleans in what looks like "Satherville", Iowa. Since there was never a town called "Satherville", I found out that the town is "Estherville" or, in most cases, the Hotel Orleans was noted to have been at Spirit Lake, Iowa. Here's the cover again:



A fascinating history of the Hotel Orleans is at this link:

http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/pea...an.0002.html

I was particularly interested in this quote from the above link which certainly explains the RPO postmark on the cover:

Oh wow, that is some interesting History on that.
Sounds like it was a very luxurious place.
Just attempted to find it on Google Maps. Does not appear that anything is left of the place

I read one obscure reference that suggests that the Hotel Orleans building still stands, but is privately owned.

Sorry, incorrect info. The PROPERTY is privately owned (not the building). The Hotel Orleans was destroyed and rebuilt four times before finally succumbing to its last fire in 1936.

The cover shown would have been the second (or third) renovation to the property since it was initially built in 1883.

Here's an excerpt from a contemporary newspaper account from 1992 of the "grand hotels" of the region in their heyday. The specifics quoted below relate to the Orleans Hotel:

WT1 - Great research! Makes me want to find out more about all these. And Find more! LoL
I need to figure out a better way to store them and keep them organized.