1c 1851 Plate 12 Stamps

Did anyone here get the cover with the 3 plate 12 stamps that just sold? I lost the bid ($305), it sold for $336. I plated the stamps as 87L12, 97-98L12.






I think I would have removed the stamps from the envelope.

Is that the whole piece, or is it a cover?

It's a cover, tx. jaxom, I must say I can't understand removing the stamps from the cover. Even though the cover isn't very pretty, it's still a Plate 12 multiple on cover.

Well, the cover is damaged and hardly readable. The month on the datestamp is not readable. The multiple is a rare combination. The stamps may be damaged from the envelope getting wet. There is more chance of more damage to the stamps on cover since they are too close to the edge. There is no letter to accompany it. There is no wax seal on back. The cover itself has nothing of interest. If it was dated 1862, then the choice would have been harder. Did you get the cover, Dudley?

No, I didn't.

From a marketing perspective, there is very little incentive to take stamps with condition issues off of covers. You may very well actually reduce the value.

I don't recall seeing the cover. Link?

You can always leave the stamps on the cover and see how long it takes until the cheap paper used in the envelope tones and acidifies the stamps like these


Don

Sinclair, it was an eBay lot and the link no longer works.

Here I would argue that you don't know what you don't know.
The scan is fuzzy but August or April seems likely.

Someone coming at researching it from a postal history angle first, might come up with a whole different point of view than you, based upon a different prior knowledge set.

I will agree that the stamps look as though they've either been soaked previously (badly), or just suffered water damage. It would be worth inspecting that area of the cover to see if re-soaking it, to clean it, and then re-applying the stamps maybe via a hinge, might be in order or not for conservation of both items.

The addressee is faint, but it appears to read as Alfred W. Ellet. If it is, then the cover becomes a lot more interesting.

Just from what I've come across, it appears that a whole clan of Ellet men enlisted into the Union Army and formed an outfit that eventually became the infamous "Ellet's Brigade", a unit that employed unconventional (to say the least) naval tactics. In fact, 70 years later the US Navy commissioned the USS Ellet, a Benham class destroyer which served in the Pacific during WWII.

They even got a book - Ellet's Brigade: The Strangest Outfit of All, written by Chester Hearn , published in 2000.

http://www.historycentral.com/Bio/U...SAEllet.html


http://www.bhil.com/~bhlibrary/DH/ellet.html

https://ww2db.com/ship_spec.php?ship_id=238

Great post craigk!! You just made the cover way better!!!

If true, that illustrates my point well.
Even if not, it still illustrates what could be.

The letter to Alfred W Ellet could be from his nephew, Charles Rivers Ellet, who was studying medicine at Georgetown University at that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Ellet

Appears A W Ellet's brother Charles, and assorted family and in-laws all lived in Georgetown. "The Charles Ellet family lived in Wheeling Virginia, Washington D.C., and finally in the country home "Clifton" in Georgetown. When the Civil War broke out Charles Ellet, Jr. joined the Union Army as a Colonel in charge of the Ram Fleet, hoping to serve his country and to put into action his innovative naval warfare strategies."

https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/...entire_text/

Interesting stuff.

One last point I'll make on being careful what you soak, is that if you just use condition alone, of a cover as your criteria for soaking something, that's not good.

There are a lot of really beaten up, but important covers out there. The civil war produced a lot -- including probably this one, and many frontier western covers, when they have stamps, are often pen cancelled, and look horrible.

After you study where they originated, who wrote them, where they were going, how they may have gotten there and why .. they can become beautiful.

Sometimes you can't even tell from just looking at a single cover that it may have significance. But someone else out there may recognize that its part of a larger correspondence. That correspondence may have covers with more detailed postmarks and/or routing information, or may even have contents. The point being, that often one can infer from other similar covers, what an otherwise nondescript cover really is. This is why I'm not a big advocate of soaking stamps unless you really know the full spectrum of what you are looking at. Even then, keep the cover with the stamp.

Given the number of people who recommend keeping covers intact; the lack of information and communication on how to preserve them is astounding to me. More times than not the 100+ year old covers I see have already started acidification. Unless proper preservation and environmental conditions are followed, many covers will deteriorate into brittle trash in the future.

There are neutralization sprays such as this one sold by Subway
http://www.subwaystamp.com/ARCHIVAL...o/ZPTWATTAM/

Here is another
http://www.talasonline.com/deacidification

I have always been a bit hesitant in using a water soluble spray on some covers; 'lightly' misting them seems to be the best practice. I assume that you could also safely use dry baking soda, just sprinkling it lightly inside the cover and then shaking to try to get a coating across the paper surface.

For folks who 'print-your-own' album pages (especially if you also use sheet protectors) I would recommend periodically testing the paper to make sure it is not going acidic. There are inexpensive pens which use reagents to visually indicate the pH of paper. (These are permanent markers so do not use on any stamps.) But occasionally checking the pages (in an inconspicuous place) may save you from heartbreak one day.
https://www.amazon.com/Lineco-Testi...p/B000KNJCSS

If folks are not taking perservation steps than by all means get some good scans of the covers so others may learn from them after they are no longer recognizable.
Don

It is true that there is a dearth of information published by normal philatelic outlets on conservation. One good one was published by the Philatelic Foundation in the book PF Opinions IV.

Paper Conservation Techniques and Detection by Frank Mandel :

http://www.philatelicfoundation.org...inside-view/