Question Is What Is It Worth.

Question is what is it worth.
JOHN HANNA APPOINTMENT LETTERS WITH ENVELOPES.

Don't worry about the colours in the pictures as the camera plays up will take new scans if needed.














Some Response from others

These are great historical items. In those days, the small town postmasters were appointed by the Postmaster General with the advice of the congressmen serving the locality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H...28Indiana%29

Postmasters were patronage positions under the influence of the political party in power at the time of the appointment. Postmasters of 4th Class post offices were appointed by the Postmaster General through his First Assistant. You might find the applicable law interesting.

Postal Laws and Regulations of the United States 1879

Sec. 101. Appointment and term of office of Postmasters. – Postmasters of the first, second, and third classes shall be appointed and may be removed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and shall hold their offices for four years unless sooner removed or suspended according to law; and postmasters of the fourth-class shall be appointed and may be removed by the Postmaster-General, by whom all appointments and removals shall be notified to the Auditor (of the Treasury) for the Post-Office Department. (Act July 12, 1876, 6, 19 Stat., p. 80.)

Sec. 102. Appointments by First Assistant Postmaster-General. – All appointments of postmasters are issued by direction of the Postmaster-General from the office of the First Assistant Postmaster-General.

Penalty mail started in 1879 and ended in 2003. Penalty mail killed the Official Stamps like the one shown on the cover to John Hanna in your other post. Official stamps were declared obsolete in 1884.

You have a nice little collection of US Postal History here.

You have found one of the few relics that inflation hasn't
savaged over the years.

The "penalty for private use to avoid paying postage" has
been $300 for well over a century.

Some very nice Indiana Postal History there.

If you haven't checked already, both are discontinued post offices that were only in operation for short relatively short periods of time in the late 19th and early 20th century:

Friendswood, Indiana (1868-1909)
Woodbank, Indiana (1869-1877)

Thank you for your response,
I did not know this as I am in Australia and mainly collect The Netherlands and Older Australia.
Do you have any Idea what it is worth to sell them in The USA where they belongs.
To someone who is interesting in Postal history.

As far as I know there is no catalog for such things. Value is "all over the place", as I've seen similar items on ebay from $1 to $5000, but most completed sales seem to be in the $50 to $300 range. However, those prices are mostly based on larger certificates when the Postmaster appointments were signed by the President of the United States (no idea if actual autograph or just secretarial signatures, though).

In any case, your complete package, with envelopes bearing Official Stamps would likely be of more interest than just the letters of appointment.

You may also want to take into consideration that the Official Stamps shown on period covers have a catalog value alone of about $20 each.

About $45.00-$50.00 (USD) respectively maybe more maybe less but I would think that's in the ball park. I really like them too nice items.

These are not actually the letter of appointment, but rather a notice sent out by the Office of the First Assistant Postmaster General (note these are "clerk" signed) to inform officials that an appointment has been made. In this case, it is likely that the addressee, Hon John Hanna, was the Representative from the district where these post offices were located.

No doubt the Representative had "lobbied" for their appointments.
Such notices might also be sent to the local newspaper or other prominent citizens in the town where the post office was located.

I have several of these, but they are less common than the actual letters sent to newly appointed postmaster or the actual postmaster commission documents. They are quite collectible, and the price range quoted is in line with what I have paid for similar items in the past.

I hope you found them a good home.

The first image is of a penalty overprinted stamped envelope. The UPSS is in the process of publishing a new version of the penalty overprint catalog. The previous version was published circa 1984. A beta edition of the new catalog is available as an ebook on their website (upss.org/publications). They are entertaining comments/corrections and expect to publish the hardbound version later this year. If you collect these things and would like to contribute to the making of a quality catalog, get the ebook (dirt cheap price for UPSS members of $.01!). Otherwise wait for the hardbound.

Penalty overprinted stationery is classified by overprint Type and corner card Variety. The envelope in the OP is of variety 19. Can't make out the type; would need a better scan of the indicium and overprint.

In order to get the catalog price, we would also need the size, knife, and watermark of the underlying envelope.