Another Question About History Of C25A

Below are images of a couple of FDC's of C25a. Each says something to the effect that C25a was "issued chiefly" for the US armed forces. But Postal Bulletin No. 18555 simply announced that




No doubt that it was more convenient for service personnel to carry stamps in booklet format, but the Postal Service announcement does not single out service personnel. Yet, several FDC's for the stamp refer to this stamp as being "issued chiefly" for the convenience of service personnel overseas during the war. So the notion came from somewhere. Does anybody know the origin of it?

A couple of covers from my collection, to illustrate:

Not an expert by any means but two thoughts.

Can you locate any information in military records for contract to purchase and supply the stamp booklets from usps? If you compare this to a quantity printed (which is all that might have been able to be shared at the time as quantities issued is an after the fact number) then you could discern what might validate the statement made on the covers. The statement "issued Chiefly for..." Has a certain latitude in it for interpretation. But this would be half the story because domestic family members would possibly use the stamps as well.

Even without the above, was it simply reasonable to presume at the time that the military would be the largest user of these stamp booklets. Fact that they are FDC's can you provide date of the postal bulletin announcement so the window of time can be bracketed?

Interesting covers!

Postal Bulletin No. 18555 was issued February 15, 1943, and the new stamp was issued March 18, 1943. So cachet makers had about four weeks to prepare. A majority of the cachets produced for the issue make no mention of this or the war, but tend to reuse designs already created for the previous Transport Plane stamps. I've ordered a copy of "The Transports," so perhaps there will be some additional information in it.

Just FYI I have over the years accumulated over 4,000 WWII covers bearing this stamp sent from military bases/posts domestic and foreign, and have less than 200 that are non-military. Seems a strange difference of useage since I didnt collect or look for these covers specifically, just from buying lots and collections, the vast majority had some kind of military use associated with them. I Wish I had more definitive info for you, but interesting that since my collecting was completely random and only focused on US material. Please when you receive and peruse your copy of "Transports", please post a Note for us out here =)

A stamp album page I have has the brief blurb at the bottom telling of what the stamps were. Same as mentioned earlier in the thread.

LarryBruce.....go 1 page forward in the album.
You are showing the incorrect page.

Yeah, your plane is headed in the wrong direction, and has too many engines.




1maddmatter,

Are you sure about this? 4000 covers with C25a on them, almost all military usage? The reason for the nature of my response is that while I've only just started looking for postal usage of C25a, especially military usage, they seem to be uncommon. If what shows up on ebay is indicative of relative usage, even after C25a was issued, most soldier use of a six cent stamp for airmail remained the C25, not the C25a. But if you really have that many covers with C25a on them from WWII service personnel, and would be interested in selling any, I'd be interested in seeing what you have (especially any on patriotic covers).

As for "The Transports," while a very informative book, it really didn't have an answer to my question. This is all it really has to say on the matter:



No doubt #2 was true (of the original C25), but how did the purpose reflected in this internal department correspondence become public knowledge so as to lead to the "issued chiefly for" language on cachets? The language of that caption suggests definite knowledge of purpose, not surmising or inference, no matter how well known was the popularity of the original C25 for military use. So I still don't know how this became "public" knowledge (and maybe never will).

If I seem pedantic in the quest for this information, it is because I'm thinking of writing an article about FDC's for C25a and C26 on patriotic covers, and I'd like to know as much about the background for these stamps as possible before I undertake an such an effort.

Basil

enjoy...




These pages I used here are not "in" the original album they are loose pages "from" an album.

Well, show and tell time. The Transports from my "main" album (images reduced to show two pages at a time to get the effect of how they appear in the album):







One of these days I'll get around to replacing the C15-C31 covers with covers with plate blocks. I probably will have to do it with mixed cachets, but that might actually make it more interesting.

Basil

I like the matching "House of Farnum" cachets on your Blocks of Airmail Transport stamps. Sometimes the small and simple cachets do more to enhance a cover than the more elaborate ones do.

(The C32 Plate Block FDC is a Louis Nix cachet.)

Hi Basil this is a nice endeavor and good luck in your research. Can you share how one goes about researching a worthy yet esoteric subject? I assume due to lack of literature one has to locate and study as many non FDC covers as possible. Do you set up searches at websites for example for completed listings and save images? I imagine stamp shows are key, and New York 2016 would be a great venue with so many foreign cover dealers present. Are you able to map the military base usages by foreign location through covers?

Just interested if you can share ideas on how best to research a challenging area.

Crouse27,

Generalizing first, I think there are two sources of information that have to be investigated. First, are there any standard "reference works" that would help? No matter what the subject, it is relatively rare that someone hasn't investigated facets of it before. In my case, some of the reference works and resources I've used so far:

1) As noted, "The Transports" by G.H. Davis
2) "United States Patriotic Covers of World War II" by Lawrence Sherman
3) Mellone's catalog of FDC's for the 1940's (essential, because everybody uses his catalog I.D.s, but I've found a couple of significant oversights or errors so far, so I will treat it with caution)
4) Postal Bulletins, which can be searched, here:
http://www.uspostalbulletins.com/pd...oup=48&id=48
5) The digital archive of back volumes of "First Days" which can be searched in their entirety from within Adobe Acrobat.

I'm sure there is a wealth of information that could be obtained via APS that I am completely unaware of.

The second source of information is whatever it is you are researching. This usually begins with what's in your own collection. Then you use Google to find other examples, at ebay, in the online listings of auction houses, specialized web resources (e.g. http://www.aerodacious.com/, http://www.navalcovermuseum.org/, whatever the interest, there is probably a website dedicated to it), and so forth.

Stamp shows would be a kind of blend of these two. Exhibits, especially if they cover some aspect of what you are specifically researching, would be a source of knowledge and information. And then the dealers will have stock you can peruse to see what is "out there" that you are looking for. I attended my first show just last month, TEXPEX in Dallas. There were a couple of exhibits touching on airmail, and those were informative as to what and how philatelic research is presented, but they didn't touch on my current area of specific interest. Then I went around to the dealers. I came away with only one new C25a cover. The dealers that I talked to, and whose stock I went through, did not have anything at all like I was hoping for. But examples (of C25a and C26 FDC's on patriotic covers) show up on ebay not infrequently, so every day or two I do a "newly listed" search of US covers with the keywords "patriotic" and "wwii." I've come up with a several nice covers this way. I won't give up on the stamp shows, but ebay, and some online dealers (McCusker, Brookman, PostalHistoryStore, SwapMeetDave, Buckacover, to name a few) keep me busy searching.

I am a relatively new collector (started in 2003), but I've spent 40 years doing research in several different fields, and it is pretty much the same kind of endeavor for something like this.

Thanks for asking.

Basil

wt1, thanks for the observation. So maybe I should try to find an HF PB cover for C32! I do like that the C25a cover in the album is HF also. It is actually somewhat hard to find a cachetmaker who did all 8 of the Transport series with a common cachet. Some only did the 1941 issues, so a set of C25-C31 covers for those cachets will usually say "no C26." Prolific cachet designers, like Ioor and Crosby did them all, but I don't think you'll find a set of 8 with identical (or close to similar, as above with the HF covers) cachets. Same with Stahle, and no doubt others.

Besides the album that the images I posted came from, I have two 4" 3 hole D ring binders full of FDC's for the Transports. I can put together lots of C25-C31 covers, but in terms of being clean, and consistent (all the blocks of 4), the HF collection is probably the best, which is why it is in my "main" album.