$68 Billion Cover

A few years ago I offered the above '$68 Billion cover' on ebay and only t360 picked up on the connection it held between what became two pharmaceutical giants that eventually merged.

He did offer to pay me more than the original ebay selling price but I told him everyone likes a bargain at auction and congratulated him on his find; he won the cover fair and square.

Well I have another such Wyeth/Pfizer cover along with a few other commercial covers addressed to John Wyeth and Brother which will be going up on ebay sometime soon and am posting them here for continuity.



It looks as if someone at Wyeth was saving stamps and covers for somebody and some of the covers ended up in a box of stuff I won at Bel Aire a while ago.

Richfield Springs, by the way, (see first cover below) is just 'down the road' from here near Cooperstown. A. J. Smith & Son were druggists in that little town.

Here is a page about Richfield Springs (Otsego County) where you will find A. J. Smith & Son listed among other businesses of the day.

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ny/coun...eld/bus.html



I also like the "Manufacturing Chemists" Dr. McDonnell used to address them on the cover, below.

Neat stuff! I like the Columbian related Postal stationery especially!

Yes, those Columbians made great postal stationery. I suspect these covers survived because unlike covers bearing postage stamps, the stamps weren't torn from the envelopes and the envelopes thrown away.

Also, the similarity of all these corner cards makes me wonder if they were provided preprinted to businesses by the post office.

Another interesting thing is that if you look at the Richfield Springs link, shown above, there were a lot of businesses in this small town at that time, mostly sole proprietorships with a few partnerships. The town wasn't at the mercy of a few big corporations.