Interesting C11 Cover

While I mainly collect FDC's, I keep my eyes open for any interesting or unusual covers with US airmail or aviation themed postage. So when I saw the following, it caught my eye:





The hand drawing on the cover is unusual (in my experience) for this early date. One always has to watch out for hand drawings on covers added later, but that doesn't appear likely here. First, it would be odd to choose such an unusual cover for an addon cachet. Second, the sideways rubber stamped cachet on the front, and the ornate script, seem to be placed after the aircraft image was already on cover.

According to the American Air Mail Catalog, this first flight, 9W8, had no USPO official cachet, and the Milwaukee Association of Commerce cachet shown on the front, and the back, is not documented in the catalog.

I presume the aircraft is supposed to be a Ford Trimotor.

The images are from the auction. I don't have the cover in hand yet. But I can hardly wait to receive it.

Basil

It is a real eye catcher, nice colors, nice penmanship, nice Air mail bi-plane SON cancel, has a lot going for it.

I love the Air Mail shield with wings.

I don't really collect them but one like this might find it's way into my collection. Very interesting hand drawn cachet!

It is vary colorful and attractive, but I would not consider the hand drawing to be a cachet. This kind of amateur doodling on envelopes became popular in the Victorian era and continued on after then and this would be an example of that. There are collectors of such covers. The cover itself is listed in the American Air Mail Catalog as flight 9W8 and is one of the most common covers from this time. The new catalog puts a value on it as a flight cover at $3 which is pretty much the minimum given to any flight cover. The value of yours is in the added doodling which I agree appears to have been done at the time the cover was prepared and sent.

You may want to checkout this link. It would seem R.C. Davidson of Chicago was a noted cachetmaker as listed on the Naval Cover Museum Website:

http://www.navalcovermuseum.org/res...avidson.html

Kimo, I realize that the hand drawing would not be considered a cachet.

wt1, thanks for the link. It explains the "6201 Blackstone Ave". I knew it wasn't right, but I was trying to read it "Blacstone Air" (or some abbreviation for aviation).