A Couple Air Mail Covers

This post from a "pillar of the community" should be seen more as a post from a clueless newbie.

I have never collected postal history so I'm basically clueless and thought I'd use this as a first opportunity to start learning.

Sure, I'm interested in value, but more I'm interested to hear how people think about these and what if anything makes them interesting. I've downloaded the Labron articles from Stamp Smarter and I'm hoping they start to give me some clues. So this is hopefully just a first step in my education.

Thanks in advance.

It seems to me you're asking a bit of a philosophical question, about what makes it worth one's time to delve into a given cover, or on the other hand to assemble a broader batch of covers that have some linking characteristics(s).
I phrase it that way because there may be two different impulses at hand when you get into postal history.

I would not say I am a postal history collector, but I have a few covers that qualify.
I find that what pulls me in is the broad question of "what was going on here? Who were these people and what might have been in this envelope?" Kind of a human interest historical question.

But for me it is about isolated covers I happen to acquire as examples of a stamp in actual use, and which I feel compelled to research. This has led me to pretty deep dives in terms of time devoted to single covers to try and figure out everything I can and that's probably covered by the standard questions of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Who the recipient and sender were and what was their relationship?
What about the stamp(s) - what are they (- not always apparent) and why were they used and not some other stamp(s)? When it was sent, what rates applied and what does the postage tell us?
Where was it coming from and where was it going? In your example, I am getting interested in the old Baltimore Hotel - what sort of establishment is it and what is Mrs. Verdon doing there? For me this has meant questions about the postal markings (such as a World War I censor marking I've been looking at recently)?
Do the answers to the above give us a hint as to the contents and the why (assuming the actual letter was not in the cover)?


But this sort of interest on my part has not led me to collect other similar covers in a systematic way. Yet. With one little exception I suppose. So I will leave it for others to answer that aspect of the impulse.

What makes a cover "tick" for any collector is an individual decision. Airmail covers (like most postal history areas) offer considerable opportunity to delve in to postmarks, rates, routes, frankings, senders/recipients, etc. Fortunately, airmail covers (and as you can see above, special delivery) often come with transit and receiving marks to track their travels. The rapid development of airmail in the few short decades leading up to WWII is quite interesting as rates came down and service area increased.
Many of the airmail covers are inexpensive, especially those for souvenir events (first flights, airport dedications, etc.) Your first cover has a philatelic franking - certainly not the common or efficient way by using 5 stamps to get to 20 cents and still being underpaid. Some collectors want only commercial covers, while some will seek the philatelic ones. Both tell stories.
One of the most useful references for interpreting U.S. postal history is Beecher/Wawrukiewicz's book "U.S. Domestic Postal Rates, 1872-xxxx" available in several editions. The American Airmail Society has more detailed specialty airmail literature.

Thank you both for giving me somethings to think about. So, is it typical to know the detailed route of every cover in one's collection? Do people keep Excel spreadsheets with the marks and routes for every cover of interest?

With few exceptions, most would not go beyond the basic rate details and the time period that rate was in effect for that weight.

Like stamps, most will keep track of their covers somehow, whether Excel or other database application. The choice of "tool" depends on the collector. Beyond the specific topic of airmail covers here, I track many topics in Excel and find the sortability particularly useful for spotting trends. Sort one column ascending or descending and look at the data in the other fields - especially the outliers (and errors). It also makes for compact printouts for show shopping far more convenient and efficient than electronic means (IMO).

The covers you show risny are solid postal history covers. Now if one only collects Canadian Law Tax Stamps, they are of little interest. However they can be of interest to collectors of many subject areas. Airmail generally, airmail envelopes specific for airmail use, a stamp used (e.g. C1, coil pairs, Ericsson), the sender (none here), the recipient, special delivery (just the one), Special delivery in combination with other services, postage due covers, etc. As to postage due covers, some collect only postage due covers with the postage due stamp affixed other do not care.

It would also fit a general street car or Kansas City specific street car collection (but not a streetcar RPO collection). For fun I will not say why now, but will include an image of the hotel where the covers were delivered. Note that back then some folks lived in hotels.

Be cautious, risny, when the postal history bug bites, it really can [edit for missing word] bite hard.




From Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri for educational purposes, a circa 1907 image. Construction completed in 1899, hotel closed on August 6. 1938 and demolished in 1940. No street name needed on the envelopes due to the fact the hotel occupied one city block of Baltimore Street.

I'm much more about what story the cover can tell me about the people associated with it and less about the other aspects of it.

As John Becker notes, Beecher & Wawrukiewicz is an essential tool to have handy for your postal history inquiries.

Very cool hotel post card, Parcelpost.

Thanks you guys. Lots to mull over.

The famous Baltimore Hotel pictured on the 1907 post card was owned by the Thomas Corrigan estate. Corrigan was the street car magnate of early-day Kansas City.

The hotel was popular for after-theater supper parties. An underground passage led from the hotel's bar to the lobby of the splendid Willis Wood Theater at Baltimore and 11th.

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I was drawn to the US Parcel Post Series (and Postal People) due to both my father's interest and the fact following his WWII Army discharge, he took a summer job with the USPOD while an Electrical Engineering (EE) student at UC Berkeley. That "summer" job became a 38 year career.

The PP series of twelve stamps was arranged in three groups of four subjects, postal people, postal transportation methods and industries using parcel post. The stamps are static but the postal history involved the USPOD people and with Postal People the USPS people.

My issue with a lot of the Air mail covers is most are philatelic creations. The first cover posted might be philatelic, the C1 Jenny was issued in 1918 so late usage for it. Al first flight covers are philatelic by definition. Commercially flown covers are a fun collecting area.

One aspect of a cover carried by airmail that most collectors are interested in is what was the route it took while being flown. There are several references, but if you are interested in domestic US mail then perhaps one of the best is the American Air Mail Catalogues, the section on Contract Air Mail Routes (CAMs and AMs) which list all of these routes with little maps and the cities that were served along with the dates that mail was first flown on them, commonly called First Flights.

As to whether First Flights are "by definition philatelic" I would argue that while they have a philatelic aspect they were actually carried by the US Post Office on officially established mail routes by a new kind of transport - aircraft. They are very different from something like an airport dedication cover or a modern first day cover or a celebration of a president's birthday cover or similar that were not actually officially carried in the post along a specific postal route. And if one wishes to say that a mail route that was carried by an aircraft is something philatelic then one would also need to say that any mail carried by any particular class of conveyance is also by definition philatelic and include covers carried by rail or by ship or by pony express or by stagecoach, etc. etc. People should collect whatever they like whether things that were carried on actual mail routes or not. And whether something was carried officially on the first or fiftieth or five thousandth trip by that mail carrying contractor does not make any of them purely philatelic.