Help With Cover From 1829

Hello,

could someone help me with this cover?

Im lost with this. In the letter, it is dated from 1829. But how I can valuate this cover? Is there a Scott number or somewhat? Can somebody detect the cancel?

What do you think?

Thanks a lot for your help and opinions!

This is a stampless cover, which was created long before stamps existed, so there is no Scott number. The cancel is someplace in Pennsylvania. There is a stampless cover catalog which would list it.

The postmark is at the lower left. The rate of "25" cents is at the upper right, to be paid by the recipient. 25 cents was the rate for over 400 miles, thus the town name in the cancel will be quite far away from Northington, Hartford County, Connecticut, which the post office list on Jim Forte's website shows open 1810-1830, thus an uncommon destination.

https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp

I agree, the cancel does seem to have "PA" at the bottom for Pennsylvania. I would look inside the letter to see how it begins. An image of the top third of the first page might be useful to us, since that usually contains a town name with the date you apparently already found. (Or look at the very end of the letter or at any notations added by the recipient.) The name of the sender can also be useful in determining an origin town. I have a guess or two for the postmark, but I will hold off until you look inside, but if you can figure out the cancel, then it can be looked up in the American Stampless Cover Catalog at:

https://www.uspcs.org/resource-cent.../your-input/

The value of a stampless folded letter is quite variable. One can begin with the ASCC listing, and adjust for overall condition, the cancel quality, the noteworthiness of the sender or recipient, the interest level of the contents, the destination town, etc.

Thanks a lot John and revcollector! This was very interesting and instructive. I have looked inside the letter, there is writen "Indiana (PA) ..." and something I can't read.

But it doesn't seem to match with the cancel, or does it?

I post here pictures from the letter.

Looks like something boro or burg for the town.

Just a thought - Indiana is not only the name of a town, it is also the name of the County in which it is located. There are about 25 other towns and boroughs in Indiana County and perhaps it might be one of those.

As for value, I have always been surprised and disappointed at how little stampless covers tend to bring unless there is something very special about them. The lack of a readable postmark tends to significantly lower the values even further than their often modest values if they had clear postmarks. Another kind of stampless covers that I am even more surprised about their general modest values are the ones from post offices that were so small or so new that they did not even have a cancellation device and instead were marked by the postmaster using just his own handwriting.

Indeed. I sold quite a lot of French stampless covers - after the first lot, they proved slow movers. One drawback with those was probably that they were mainly to/from notaries, as most of those I've had tend to be.

To maybe answer the question of what comes after the Indiana (PA) I cropped and enlarged your picture and to me it looks as if it may say "Dateline" if that makes any sense.

Cheers, Bill

The text of the letter mentions being in "Indiana near Armaugh (sp?) at the Bucket Factory".

According to this book, there was a bucket factory in Indiana County, PA, from approximately 1828-1837, in an area later known as Cramer, which would be here.

Could the cancel be the nearest large city, Pittsburgh, PA?