Spectrum Eagle FDC

No room for a cachet on this one, but I thought I'd show how nicely the USPS applied their FDOI cancellation to these stamps, so that each of the six face different stamps has the tie-in postmark:

Wow it's really rare they pay that close attention. Great cover! :)

Normally I don't like modern material but I must admit that I like the eye appeal on that FDC, nice use of the colors.

You took the words right out of my fingers, stallzer! Those look pretty nice.

While not as visually pleasing as an entire strip of the various "Spectrum" colors, here's another cover that I had serviced. Note that it contains two stamps of the same color (required to meet minimum first class postage) but the left stamp is from the 10K coil and the right from the 3K coil. You can ascertain the subtle differences in the width of the vertical strips (wider in the strip with USA on the 10K variety; narrower in the 3K variety):



Although it was suggested on another thread that this may have not been an intentional "variety" but merely a die cutting "freak", it nevertheless makes it easy to distinguish the two varieties when tied into one first day cancellation.

Love the range of colors!

I got here from another thread discussing the Spectrum Eagle differences (intrigued), but now I have an unrelated question. On the full strip cover above, are the right 3 stamps actually consider to be 'tied' to the cover, since the ink bar is only on the stamps and doesn't touch the cover?

WOW! Grest cover! I don't usually like US issues after the 90's, but this one is A1. Too bad they wasted good design and
printing on "Junk Mail". Oh well, it still makes a great cover.

wc

there are 4-bars with the top bar barely visible but touching the stamp, therefore linking the postmark-cancel -- just under 'Pre-Sort First Class & thru border.

eligies, thanks for the reply. I did see the bar on the right three stamps (though it is easy to miss). My point was that nowhere on those three stamps does the ink cross over the edge and continue on to the cover. I guess the answer is that they are tied to the cover by the design of the postmark/cancellation.

The Postmark-Cancel Bar is one unit/element of the total cover (while the far left circle postmark is a separate unit/element). This was probably done as a manual cancel in that fashion in order to insure all stamps were cancelled. The circle postmark (without bars) serves to provide city, date time & cancel while the 4-bars serves to cancel. The cover as a whole takes in all the elements as linked.

I agree with the previous posts.

Remember, these are modern self adhesive stamps that were on liner paper and had to be manually applied to the envelope. I suppose I could have spaced the stamps out a bit so the top bar of the FDOI marking hit both the stamp and the cover, but the stamp color scheme would have lost something that way.

Of course, in the "old days" when gummed stamps were common, the perforations between the stamps would have served to show that the postmark/cancel hit both the stamps and the cover and "tied" them both together. Not so easy to do these days.

I think I would have gone three and three and then a cachet.

I find both of these covers very attractive!