USPS Vs Postal Commemmorative Society Covers

How can I distinguish USPS First Day Covers from Postal Commemorative Society covers? Are postmarks different or wording? I think I have some of both but not sure.

Early PCS subscription FDC had the artcraft cache alone. Late 80s or in the 90s, the caches were noted to be artcraft but also carried a small pcs logo as well. in the late 90s or into the 2000s, the only marking was the PCS logo. If you subscribed to their 'early back issues' program you would receive a mixture of cache makers. This program provided FDCs that PCS purchased from collectors & were then sold to subscribers a a high premium price. If you are talking about USPS FDCs from the USPS Stamp fulfillment, these are (with the excepton of recent specialty envelopes)all without caches. The USPS also provides a digital colored postmark, but also uncached. If the FDC's are cached with no PCS logo, there is no way to determine if they are Postal Commemorative Society, unless it is accompanied by the information panel. Some sets may not follow these rules (Birds & Flowers as an example carries only the Cache's Artist name, while Celebrating the 20th Century only has the PCS LOGO.) Hope that helps a little. (I subscribed to both programs & found that the USPS Fulfillment was far less expensive & with the inception of the Digital Colored Postmark satisfied my collection program.)

The USPS is the only entity that legally can apply a POSTMARK to a franked piece of mail. PCS would send in boxes of cache envelopes for the USPS to apply the FDC Cancel. After postmarking, the USPS would return the postmarked items back to PCS for further processing & distribution to their subscribers PCS did not apply the postmarks.

Thank you. I will post pictures. It sounds like many issues to consider & I want to understand as I will be given over 300 to value for someone.

>>>>>>>>>>> The USPS is the only entity that legally can apply a POSTMARK to a franked piece of mail.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<


This is not entirely true. Anyone can apply for a "Mailers Postmark Permit" and cancel their own mail

Peter

not to cause a row but I believe that type was either a pre-printed indicia or rubber stamp indicia that noted it was a permit & carried the permit #. If it went through the cancelling system it was postmarked by the USPS, if it by-passed the cancellation process then there was no postmark applied. The permit was instead of a stamp & postage was paid at the receiving door or in a trust account for advance payment. (I think, I've been retired USPS since 2011..)

To clarify Peter's post above, here are examples of Mailer's Postmark Permits, which were applied to stamps by the mailer and properly bypassed any additional postmarking:


USPS vs PCS cachets. I suspect that one or both are marked in some way with a logo or other easy means to ID the origin of the cachet maker. Show us some examples, please. Regardless, both cachet makers produced their wares in large quantities beyond current demand. The value of each (with perhaps a very few exceptions) is very modest and not worth the time investment to deal with them individually. Just look at the bulk FDC lots on ebay.

John, thanks for the illustrations. I have just become a wiser collector.

Postal Commemorative Society ("PCS") was first formed in 1970 as a division of MBI. Its first product was U.S. first day of issue covers. In 1973, MBI was still a subsidiary of Glendinning Companies. They are not worth what they originally cost but they still have value. The gold stamp covers are priced as FDCs or event covers so they can run from 10 cents to 25 cents to 50 cents, maybe some as much as a dollar. *** Edited by Staff - Please Review the rules that you agreed to when you registered. ***

I am still figuring out how to upload pictures. In the meantime, I have organized my friend's collection & am now aware of the expense of what I'm sure she saw as an investment & I'm wondering the value regardless. From Postal Commemorative Society there is a total of 847 First Day Covers from the 1960s through 1990s. 386 have attached descriptive pages. I have them all in date order. Do the Scott First Day Cover values apply? I will get pictures soon.

Catalog values have little relationship to market values. As others have mentioned, these were mass marketed as 'collectables' and pushed out the door in huge quantities; this makes the supply far more than the demand. This is still true today, most dealers would not even offer you anything for them.As an example here is an album of 200 PCS covers that sold for $25.00 124164146487
Over the years I have had two occasions where a purchase included a lot of this material including angry letters back to the PCS when the subscriber eventually found out they had made an awful investment and were facing a market value of about 10 cents per First Day Cover.
Posting some representative images is the best thing to do before investing more of you time, folks here will be able to give you an understanding on the market value.
Don