Does 20¢ Cover The Correct Rate For Services?

Interested if you think single 20¢ stamp exactly covers the services requested.

2¢ for postage (don't think was over 1oz.)
15¢ for registration.
That leaves 3¢ (Would that be for return receipt requested?)

I agree with your rate and fee analysis.

Note also the geometric oval killer which is nonstandard. This is likely used due to the 1928 re-directive that said that dated town cancels were not to be used to cancel stamps on registered covers. This was to make clerks check the back for tampering and proper sealing (didn't always work). The re-directive did not specify exactly how stamps were to be cancelled on registered mail but may have assumed something like a mute double oval cancel would be used.

Here, a geometric cancel was improvised. I'd consider this to be fancy. The re-directive led to many more oddball cancels including fancies on registered mail through the earlier 1930s and after.

Yes, properly franked registered return receipt cover for the period. Additional info on registered covers and data base of examples at https://stampsmarter.org/features/NYReg_Book.html

Thanks all for the replies.
The book is a great reference.
It included an almost identical cover explaining the rate.

Pat

patg23,
You don't say how you arrived at your rate/fee conclusion, whether good guessing or using various references, but to answer you more broadly, the best resource is to obtain the Beecher/Wawrukiewicz books on domestic and international rates. They will solve the vast majority of U.S. rate questions.

John,
I was pretty sure the postage was 2¢, and registry was 15¢. Saw the request for return receipt, and hoped it was 3¢; otherwise it would be over/under paid.

Something in my collector soul is happy a single issue covered the requested services.

Thank you for the book reference.

pat

If you can get the 3rd Edition, do so. The APS is selling it, not Tony. He fronted the money for the print run, he was to be repaid that money as books sold (I understand he has been) and then all other copies sold are pure profit for the APS.

The 3rd Edition covers more time on the modern end, has better information on scarcity in some areas which now contradicts what is in the earlier editions and newly has coverage of foreign rates as well. That was included in the 3rd Edition to avoid a second edition on the International Book, per my understanding.

Yes you got the rating correct. The three cent fee for return receipts was just a few years old in 1929 (4-15-1925 start), prior to that RRs were free for registered and insured matter. Restricted delivery RRs did not start until 3-18-1931 at which time asking for a RR after mailing was a nickel verses the three cents at time of mailing fee.

In my opinion the 3rd edition is 450+ pages of great rate information for the serious postal historian or student; but I do not consider it light reading for a casual hobbyist.

I wish authors and publishers would at least consider selling digital versions. This would open the door for much greater distribution (I do not buy into the opinion that this would greatly increase theft of content, if the marketplace is demand is there than folks can also easily scan/copy hard copies) to hobbyists who have a casual interest but are not students. I think this book is a good example; many hobbyists have some covers they would like to learn more about rate info on and a digital version is much easier to search, sell, and distribute.
Don
Don

Don, did you really think this comment through? This is a serious question here, did you? Seriously there are valid reasons many folks collect, "just stamps" instead of postal history.


All of the books, magazines, sheets and the like which discuss the various rates and fees for US mail matter are all digitized now and FREE, most through the support of the book's author, Tony. The annual USPOD Postal Guides are over at Stamp Smarter for example, the dailies are on line as are the PL&Rs here: http://www.uspostalbulletins.com/ While I have a complete run of the Annual and Monthly USPOD Postal Guides as pdfs, I do not know where they are located on line. But with a thumb drive of around 64 MB, they can be copied, if you want them all for Stamp Smarter. Send me an address to use at my SCF email and will send a thumb drive.

That way the
in postal rates and history already have FREE digital access to the 100s of thousands of pages of postal information, right? They do not need the book any more.

Now I am surprised that you did not mention the rate information Tony did publish as a digital format. It too is available via the APS. Tony did it that way since printing it as a book or as part of a rate book was prohibitive and excluded from his International book. One CD contains the compilation of all of the international parcel post rates (and APP too I think) for the period the book covers. I did not have an issue using the hard copy I got years ago from Tony (the cost of photocopying was not cheap). Alas it was stolen or destroyed by criminals. But I have not replaced it with the digital version (yet) I just use the original source digitized publications.

Nothing stops one from buying the book, slicing the pages out and running then through a pdf producing copier for ease of searching, especially when reviewing covers at a stamp show. But paper book or not, the Rate books are a vast improvement over the 100s of thousand pages of material one needs to handle to get the same answers. My time is worth money and the time the paper book saves is worth multiples of cover price of all the editions put together.

FWTW, Don, your comment made me think back to a time in my career when I was asked to provide "an executive summary" of a document on a particularly complicated topic. I did. I was immediately chastised for the long document and was strongly advised to do as I was told or face discipline (seems my guy was getting pressure from his gal). I quickly provided a new e-mail for which I quoted via copy-paste the title, "An Executive Summary of...." and attached the same PDF under which I wrote, As I indicated many times this was a complicated subject and that the attached is the 213 page Executive Summary as provided us. While I did not find it a quick read, I can agree that it is a fine summary covering the salient highlights appropriate for and expected within an executive summary. No further replies received.

Later in a hallway exchange, I got a smile, a shaking head and a "sorry for doubting you" and confirmation he got as much enjoyment sending a 213 page Executive Summary as I did. That is government for you.

Consider the US rate books are an executive summary of sorts which still requires the novice or student to refer to the original documents in some areas, such as carrier and non-carrier offices regarding "first class letters, local" rates. And, unlike the original documents, it presents examples for guidance and understanding. It well deserves, even in paper versions.

I also remind you the reason I joined the SCF, I, an expert in just US Parcel Post, needed help in determining the dates and rates of the when Canada first started domestic insurance on parcel post matter. I had an artistically beautiful domestic Canadian parcel post rate calculator that I wanted to date as it had no copyright notice nor patent date. http://goscf.com/t/76499 Now if there was a Canadian rate book on par with the US rate books, I would buy it or them. Until then, I just post questions. That method also worked for the OP on this thread.

Lastly, I wish the OP finds a drop or local rate registered letter with return receipt for the same 20 cents but when normal letter rate is three cents but local is just two. We here on SCF will be happy to confirm it as such.

Of course I thought through my comment before posting, applying technology to facilitate access to information was my career over the last four decades. Note that I separated my opinion on digital publications from my opinion on Tony's rate book in my post (the white space was meant to form a distance between the two opinions).

I know Tony and have talked to him a number of times on the phone/Zoom on this specific topic. In my opinion he fully understands the value of digital publication, especially in the context of specialized content which is often accessed on an infrequent basis. Aside from his contributions to the hobby in general, Tony has made content contributions to Stamp Smarter and I greatly enjoy working with him. I think that he is forward looking on this topic and is more forward looking than our hobby in general when it comes to digital publishing. I also digitized Russ's (hoosierboy) registry book linked above because he recognizes the value of digitization. There are some in the hobby who have a great tech vision; the frustration in the second part of my post above is with how slow our hobby has been to embrace digital content technology overall.

Regarding your point 'nothing stops one from buying the book, slicing the pages out and running then through a pdf producing copier for ease of searching'; this is true and this is something I have done with most of my books. I do this for a number of reasons including medical reasons. For the last 7 years, due to the grim reaper sitting outside my front door, I have been trying to reduce the eventual disposition burden on my family when I pass. Having a library of reference books and a room full of stamps and covers might be fine when a person is healthy but things change when your mortality card is being played out on a daily basis. Having digital versions to buy allows people who want to stay engaged in the hobby without increasing disposition efforts after they pass.

I think that I may have done more philatelic digitalization then anyone other single person in the hobby. When I scan these publications I do not do destructive scans; I do significant post-scan image work that typically results in high quality PDFs. Here is an example of the Quaker City periodical that I digitized

The hard copies of this periodical are very poor condition and look nothing like the image above. I then run these through a good (i.e. costly) OCR application and not one of the crappy free OCR apps that are sometimes used. In this case I was able to donate the hard copies to one of the other members here who has an extensive personal reference library because these were in the public domain.

But at the end of the day of digitizing, I am left with an ethical and logistical issue for non-public domain publications. I have illegally produced a copy of the author's work because I have only purchased one copy. Do I go burn the hard copy after the I digitize it? Frankly this is something I have tried and it simply 'feels' wrong to be 'burning books' and destroying one of a limited run of these books. I could keep both copies for a while (while I am around) and instruct my family to destroy the digital files when I pass but then I have not reduced the disposition burden on them. In fact, I have increased it for them by having both copies.

It should also be mentioned that digital versions also support access for those with visual impairments; something that I would think is not uncommon for the philatelic demographic. So I am not the only one who is facing these issues.

I digitized a 70-year run of the US Cancellation Club (at the club's request) periodical back in April. A tremendous resource but it has been sitting here for months now and not yet made public. In my opinion, they have the right vision; they want to offer this specialize content to the hobby with an eye towards increasing awareness in their specialty and their club. I (and my wife) donated our time to support this vision. For whatever reason(s), the club has not been able to get a working website online. So in an effort to help, I developed a new website for them back in May which included the entire back issue library. I was not looking to be their webmaster, I only wanted to help them get a start on something they could take over. But the project is still not available to the hobby.

I do not want to sound like I am calling out the USCC, this is something that I have experienced with countless other philatelic organizations (large and small), authors, and publishers. In my opinion our hobby runs about 20-25 years behind the technology curve. To be honest and as a person who lived in the bleeding edge of this curve for many decades, I would not recommend that the hobby assume that kind of risk and costs. But I am suggesting that being around 5 years behind the curve would be a good place for us to be. This means that philatelic authors and publishers should have moved to releasing digital versions around 2001, not 2021.
Don

Parcelpostguy:




Your statement above is at least partly incorrect.

ALL of the monthly Official Postal Guides are present on Stamp Smarter, along with the annual issues. The monthly issues are combined in a single PDF volume. They are found in the Supplement box below the Annual volume download.

Both Don and I spent months working with Tony W's original digital copies from the USPS Library microfilms to edit and OCR these and put them on Stamp Smarter.

They can be viewed online or downloaded.

Mike

Well Stamp Smarter may have the monthlies as well. However, when I tried to use the e-USPOD Guides on Stamp Smarter, I gave up due the awkward (slow) way I found they worked. Thus I guess I never bothered to find the monthlies due to that reason, nor will I return to using them again for that reason. After your post, I went back and found them. Why they are set as one pdf for the entire year group is not something I understand.

Digitized is still not as good as the actual book. My best example is my 1913 PL&R which was not replaced by the next PL&R in 1924. However each month updates were published in the monthly USPOD Postal Guides, update which were to be clipped from the monthly and then pasted at the spine edge over the text it was replacing (Mentioned in Stamp Smarter). This allowed the new rules to be on top but the old version or versions remained readable. My hard copy 1913 PL&R ease of use far exceeds trying to have the same versatility in an e-version of a 1913 PL&R and required over 120 monthly USPOD Postal Guides to perform the same task. Likewise, margin notes, post it notes and similar personal reference comments don't do well without paper pages.

As to digitizing current works and trusting folks to play fair, that is not going to happen. Payments to the creator too will disappear. Napster may be gone, the the destruction of the music industry it caused remains. Tech disruption of the market is really just about taking money from one pocket usually the creator's and putting it in to yours, be it movies, restaurant food, music, grocery store staples, pet food, automobiles, taxi and limos, classified ads, etc. When massive publishing companies have a difficult time protecting their product, the small time self-publishing author stands no chance to protect their product. This is one downside of the so-called "sharing economy" who will be the sucker who pays for the item everyone else feels entitled to share for free?

As an aside, I am no Luddite, I started creating programs in FORTRAN back in 1968 (IBM punch-cards), was using a multi-location "local-net"
hosted by UC Berkeley by 1969 or 1970 and before I retired a couple of years ago, I worked several years on the development and implementation of a huge secure data base system to replace one decades old. The old purchased used ThinkPad laptop I am using only has a one terabyte drive. My purchased used Apple desk top, well that's a different matter.

You arguments and criticisms are weak but I am not going to waste anymore time with you.
Don

Here is OP hiding in the corner while mom&dad are having a fight

I appreciate all the help and hard work that goes on here. Can't imagine the time and effort it took to research before the internet.

One of the big benefits in belonging to the UPSS is the searchable database of past issues. Have answered many of my questions on postal cards.

I will look for the 2¢ drop rate.

Best to all,
Pat