My Newly Acquired Clipper Covers!

Wow great story Basil!

blcjr wrote:


The topic I thought was apparent, so booklet panes, not sheet stamp panes. Sorry not to be clear.


No, I didn't mean that. Booklet panes are not printed individually. Booklet stamp designs are laid out differently on the printing plate vs. the sheet stamp. I think there is still a picture of this in Scott Specialized.

Booklet covers in full sheets are printed about the same size, and everything in full sheet size is sorted and stacked in order: back cover, interleaving(I think), stamps, interleaving, stamps, front cover (or in the reverse order) for #BKC2. A large stack of these is trimmed into piles of booklets. They are separated into individual booklets. Then each one gets, in this case, two staples applied by machine. The extra labor is why a penny extra was charged for the booklet, 37c for the 2-booklet pane booklet.

It would have been easier just to take sheets trimmed into booklet panes and use those for FDCs. They do this today. For this, that would mean no staple holes in the selvage. In other words, somebody had to take apart booklets to make the FDCs in this case as evident by the staple holes. Somebody got tired of doing that with yours and just tore the 3 stamps out of the booklet.



So, no I did not, per all of the above.

There are booklet panes that missed/do not have staple holes in this period, maybe even C25a. It changed at some time where "no holes/no glue strip in selvage" became common, because booklet panes without a glue strip to attach it to a booklet cover were sold by USPS in the 1990s. It probably continues today.

hy-brasil,

Thanks for the explanation. It was quote informative. I could use more clarification about this, though.




Isn't this essentially how they are sold today? If I understand what you are saying about the earlier era, how would an FDC producer get panes cut from the sheet without the holes? Were full sheets of such ever sold to collectors? Were cut panes ever sold unassembled into booklets?

Basil

Adding to my Clipper collection, purchased these lil buggers recently!

I quite like the New Caledonia flying boat stamps...






Any history on these covers would be gratefully read!

Don't know about the first two, but the last is FAM 18-15, the return flight for the first use of the "Northern Route." Does it have any backstamps?

Basil

Hi Basil, It does have a backstamp, New york!

That's good, Lawrence. If I am reading the AAMC correctly, the British government did not apply first flight cachets, but PAA applied cachets to London and Botwood mail serviced by PAA. So that appears to be what you have.

Edit: I had a senior moment here and posted a cover that I'd posted earlier in the thread and forgot about. I'd delete the following except Lawrence replied remarking about the Christmas seals, and it might leave some heads scratching if I did.

Now for something a little different(for me):




My collecting focus is US airmail and aviation topical, so I don't usually acquire material with foreign stamps sent to the US. But from an aviation perspective this one just jumped out and grabbed by attention. This is FAM 14-6, the first flight of the China Clipper from Manila to San Francisco. To me, lots of eye candy with this cover.

Basil

I like the cover Basil, with Christmas seals as well!

Hi Lawrence.

Your two covers from New Caledonia are very nice examples. Nicely franked with colorful stamps, nice clear cachets and cancels that do not overlap, nice typed address and routing instructions, and nice airmail envelopes. These were flown by Pan American Airways under their US Post Office contract: Foreign Air Mail Route number 19 or FAM 19 for short. These were flown on 2 of the 26 legs of the inaugural flight from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Auckland via Canton and Noumea. The cachets on your covers were provided by Pan Am rather than the post office at New Caledonia. Your first one was flown on the Noumea to Canton leg and is listed in the American Air Mail Catalog as flight number F19-8a. There was a very large amount of fight covers flown on this leg totaling 11,446 pieces. The second one was flown on the Noumea to San Francisco leg of the flight and is listed in the Catalog as F19-8c. There was a relatively large amount of covers flown on this leg with a total of 2,248 of them. Like all 26 legs of this flight, they are considered to be relatively common and they all catalog for $3 each. Collecting a full set of them, especially ones that match or are closely similar can be a fun and inexpensive activity.

The aircraft flown by Pan Am on this inaugural flight was one of their giant Boeing 314 flying boats, the American Clipper. She was christened on July 6, 1939 and used by Pan Am until she was sold to the Navy for the war effort in 1942. She survived the war and was scrapped in 1950. This Clipper was a one-class luxury only aircraft. It could carry 72 passengers in day-time flights, or 32 passengers with over-night passengers where every two seats converted into beds. Meals were prepared by 4-star hotel chefs on board with white coated stewards serving 5 and 6 course meals on china and silver. There were even separate dressing rooms for men and women.

Hi kimo
Thanks for the info, its very interesting, it sounds like a very luxurious flight, putting today's flights to shame!

Boeing 314's were used to inaugurate Trans-Atlantic service as well. Their luxury was well-known and it became a "thing" for the socialites of the day to get their pictures in the papers of the day boarding a Clipper bound for Europe. In my exhibit of the life of General H. H. "Hap" Harley I have an original press photo of him boarding the Dixie Clipper in April 1941:

He is not in uniform -- wearing civies -- because technically we were still "neutral" at this time, but he was on his way to England to confer with Churchill and the senior RAF leadership to survey the war effort there.

Here's a picture of FDR in the Dixie Clipper returning from the CASABLANCA conference in 1943 celebrating his 61st birthday:
Look at the headroom!

The Boeing 314 has a storied history. Here's the Dixie Clipper on a US stamp:


Basil

Excellent background Basil, thank you for that, they are giant planes!

Here is a diagram of what one of these giant Boeing 314s had inside:

Basil wrote:


Yes. Booklets haven't been stapled since the 1970s.


They didn't. I believe in that period, the post office did the stamp affixing. FDCs are essentially all addressed at that time because they did go through the mail. My point is that the postal workers preparing FDCs could easily have used booklet panes without staple holes but apparently were not allowed to do so. Also if you look at booklet pane FDCs from that time, they did seem to select the better booklet panes for use.


Unknown to me, but not generally. The post office still has them, I'm sure, including imperf sheets.


Probably not at that time since the FDC preparers didn't have them. There might have been a few booklets that missed stapling that got out.

Way later, yes. The panes that were normally folded inside a booklet were available to the public unfolded (and without glue strip) at some point, at least by the early 1990s. That was probably by direct sale and not via your local post office. The unfolded booklet panes probably appeared earlier on FDCs.

Thank you Kimo, the diagram is fascinating!