"Make A Cover Save Philately" - Article Need Suggestion

Dear friends,
When I receive covers either from friends, stamp swaps or ebay purchases,most times I wished they would have send me a better cover.when ever I write to fellow collectors about a stamp swap I tell them to make covers with elephant stamps, they try to make it, but at times it need some improvement, and I write back to them how the cover could be improved.. this time I thought to write it in my blog so that I can send them the link with examples of the type of covers I would like to have.
Only the initial part is pasted here and the link is given in two parts. please go through it and give your valuable suggestions so that we can improve it.
http://ourelephantss.blogspot.in/20...-part-1.html
http://ourelephantss.blogspot.in/20...-part-2.html

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MAKE A COVER- SAVE PHILATELY- Part 1

Philately is dying ! Philately is dying! We have been hearing this for past many years in most of the philately related discussions .. is it true? Then why is this stamp prices not coming down, many of them are going up like any thing. The number of people who collect stamps have reduced, but the rest of the people who collects stamps started specialising in certain area and this would have caused the increase in price. With the improvement in modern communication techniques ranging from telephone to email and sms, the number of people who use letters have reduced substantially, this reduced the inflow of stamps to common man who collected stamps from the letters which he received. (you always need some free stamps to start the collection, you will not go to a dealer , buy some stamps and start your collection)
So what can we do? Only thing we can do from our side is to use good commemorative stamps on the letters we sent. Encourage others to use stamps, let them be friends , relatives, fellow philatelists. Encourage usage of stamps in office. Make attractive cachets for philately related communication. Give some free stamps to young generation to encourage them to start collection. (Of course you need the younger generation to buy your stamps when you want to dispose them at ur old age, who knows your children have interest in them)
At times when I see the mails I receive from friends or purchase through online auctions, I feel sad as they are just dead mails , the don't have a stamp, just post office franking. The only thing I can do is to leave feedback on ebay "PROMOTE PHILATELY , USE POSTAGE STAMPS" . or request friends to use stamps next time.
Now let us see how we can make attractive covers which can be valuable for collectors as a cover itself , rather than removing stamps from them. From the recent trends in auction price realisations , we see that a genuinely postaly used cover cost much more than a used stamps especially if it is in good condition with attractive postamarks. The catalogues too evaluate the cost of a genuenly used cover several fold than a stamp, see the extract from SG catalogue.
PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINKS GIVEN ABOVE AS I HAVE ADDED AROUND 20+ IMAGES AS EXAMPLES THERE.

Well, I'll admitt, I'm guilty of not putting enough thought into covers I send.
Thanks for your post; it was a good, enjoyable read, helpfully illustrated.

revicbaxter happy to hear that it helped u.

For part 1 you critiqued the elephant and lion cover, "The above cover have both stamps of elephant and lion , it will be tough to use it either in exhibit of lion or of elephant , unless you collect a general exhibit of wild animals." This actually appears to be a first day cover so it's good that you got both stamps on there.

For topic cover collectors, I would think that any cover which has a reference to the topic would be collectible, not just those which are 100% on topic. For example, I like trains, so if a cover has a reference to trains, such as cancellation, return address, etc., then I consider it collectible regardless of what the stamp topic was.

I collect about anything in my topic (microscopes, microbes, laboratories) too, but a lot of collectors are more particular than I am about what they include and value.

I think Our Elephant is describing critera for what he looks for in covers he can exhibit. His suggestions are interesting and I think the covers he likes are handsome. I see his point about many of the ones he doesn't like but for me they also have their own appeal.

How about this for an idea; to send each other covers with some of our duplicates. we could challenge each other to draw our own cachets. Could be fun and funny at the same time. especially if we post the covers.

I like the idea! This is already being done with postal cards. You can read about that at http://www.postcrossing.com/

I have a few that were done when it was a penny to send a post card. I think it would be funny to see what people come up with for the cachets. In either case we would see some stamps getting used.

Thanks for all your comments,
My views regarding the covers were made after watching several topical exhibits, covers related to elephant in ebay,etc,

Even though covers seems to be visually beautiful they may be lacking philatelic value, coz the philatelic value depends not only on visual appeal of the material but also on scarcity,basically we make exhibits for exhibitions and the materials used in it should have better philatelic value, a cover genuenly used is more valuable than one used for philatelic purpose. I would compare an fdc produced just for philatelic purpose and a genuenly postal used cover with, a cto and a
genuenly used stamp.

As said by canadianphilatelist, the cover with elephant and lion is an fdc and this cover is more apt for the elephant exhibit, coz the elephant stamp is of 1d and lion stamp is of 1/2 d, here the cover is to be considered on the topic of high value stamp.

Thanks for all your comment, if you fellow collectors can suggest some additions I can improve the covers I make in future for fellow collectors.

I started collection during my final year in college and have only 8 years of experience , it would be better if senior members with better experience can express their views about making cachets.

I am also interested in sending covers/cards among members here, if possible on the topic which they are interested.

I would rather see a common definitive used to complete the postage rate, rather than a post office frank, if one does not have enough on topic stamps.

Here is a cover I received in yesterdays mail from an ebayer sending me some Jugoslavia used.

First I'll give the sender credit for using stamps to send stamps. Kudos. It would have been nice to see all love stamps or a couple definitives to complete the postage rate. Next a corresponding return label or hand written as opposed to the pumpkin. It would really have been awesome to see a holloween theme. Then his return label would have been perfect.

You should white out the address's on the cover for privacy reasons

I could cover the sender's I suppose, but I am not worried about my own. Or I could blur it in photoshop.

I have a variety of stamps from the past 50-60 years which I use to make up today's postal rate when I send out material - what I am sending is of importance and using old stamps for postage is a bonus in my opinion.

I personally don't have the time or resources to personalize every envelope I send out. Maybe for an additional fee I would consider to do so.

What is the thoughts of others?